COFAD GmbH - 40 years of expertise and partnership

After being founded in 1983, COFAD has been registered as a GmbH (limited liability company) in October 1984. The company quickly gained reputation in the sector and is a well established and widely respected consulting company in the field of fisheries, aquaculture and the blue economy today.

COFAD was founded in Berlin, Germany. One of the first assignments was a project identification mission in Burkina Faso. This mission was important for the further development of COFAD, as it brought the founder and Managing Director Ulrich W. Schmidt together with the later partner and Managing Director Roland Beck. (See photo: right: Uli Schmidt; second from left: Roland Beck; in between James Miller, who was still working for COFAD as team leader of a project in Malawi from 2018 to 2023).

The mission in Burkina Faso also influenced COFAD's future path, as it led to the first long-term project in the consortium with GOPA Consultants in 1988.

Since then, COFAD has successfully implemented more than 200 short- and long-term projects in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, either alone or in co-operation with other consulting companies. A frequent cooperation partner was GOPA Consultants, which acquired 70 % of the shares in COFAD in 2008 and increased its share to 80 % a few years later.

While COFAD remained an independent company, strong synergies and co-operations within the GOPA Group helped the company to grow steadily.

Today, we advise the European Commission or national governments and institutions in Europe as well as the World Bank, other bilateral or multilateral donors of development aid overseas or national governments on various continents.