Cameroon: the magic of medicinal plants; Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in the Congo Basin are not only providing medicine and food for the people of the region and beyond, they are also bringing in lots of cash--in foreign exchange. Tansa Musa reports from Yaounde.

For a long time wood producing countries in the Congo Basin neglected Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs). But today, as forests gradually disappear and the value of timber exports decline, countries in the region looking to diversify sources of income are now seeking ways of conserving valuable NTFPs threatened by deforestation and unsustainable harvesting methods.

NTFPs are the huge variety of material derived from forests excluding timber and fuel wood. They include bark, roots, tubers, corms, leaves, flowers, seeds, fruits, honey, fungi, and bush meat, among others. They are a source of income for the rural people who harvest them.

"Most of the things we eat here come from the forest," says Mary Labam, a housewife in Yaounde, Cameroon, just back from the market. "I'm afraid we'll soon be in trouble if the forest disappears."

Like many women in Cameroon and Central Africa, every meal Labam prepares, including leaves, nuts, fruits, oils and spices, is full of tasty, medicinal and nutritional properties straight from the forest.

Take the case of Rachel. When she finished university in 1998, like most of her peers in Cameroon, she wandered across the country in search of a job but had none. Then one day in 2000 she visited her aunt in the town of Limbe in southwestern Cameroon and saw what was going to change her life: a line of buses transporting eru, a leafy vegetable harvested in the tropical forests of Cameroon, eastern Nigeria and Angola, and consumed widely in Central and West Africa.

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The buses were heading for the small sleepy port of Idenau, some 45km west of Limbe, to be exported to Nigeria. "Before then, I only saw eru being sold in backyard restaurants in towns. I never thought at any moment that one could make some money from selling it."

Rachel obtained a CFA100,000 loan from her aunt and went into the business of buying and selling eru. Today, four years later, she doesn't envy her fellow graduates who got office jobs.

"Every month, after I have subtracted my expenditure, I am left with anything between CFA200,000 and 250,000 [her fellow graduates in the public service earn about CFA150,000 or less]," she says as she watches her eru being unloaded at Idenau. "With this I can take care of myself and support my old parents in the village."

At Yaounde's Mfoundi market, eru is sold in tiny bundles for CFA150-200, depending on the season. Once at Idenau, the bundles are sold to exporters at CFA300-350 (or CFA350,000-400,000 when in bags). From there they are shipped by small engine boats to Olon in Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria where the small bundles fetch CFA450-500 each and the bags CFA500,000-550,000. (US$1=CFA554)

The trade in eru not only benefits villagers and middle men and women but also Cameroon as a country. The customs brigade at Idenau says every day they receive about 10 to 13 commuter buses of eru, but during the peak periods the number could go up to 16. Each bus pays CFA15,000 customs duty while for each bag the seller pays CFA2,000 in taxes.

Eru, known by the scientific name of Gnetum africanum, is a liana that grows only under humid tropical forest conditions.

According to Nouhou Ndam, botanist and conservator at the Limbe Botanic Gardens, the leaves of eru are rich in protein and minerals. They contain eight essential amino acids in significant quantities and are therefore important nutritionally. Medicinally, eru is used in various treatments. In Nigeria, the leaf is used to treat enlarged spleen, sore throats and as a cathartic. In the Central African Republic, the leaf and fruit pulp are eaten to suppress nausea. In Congo, chopped leaves serve as a dressing on furuncles (boils).

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It is difficult to quantify the economic importance of NTFPs because of lack of data. The Central African Regional Programme for the Environment (CARPE) estimates that in the southwest and northwest provinces of Cameroon, the value of NTFP production and marketing totalled about US$19m in 1999, and contributed 2.8% to the regional economy.

Though harvested primarily by rural people, urban dwellers and the African diaspora in Europe and North America drive the market demand for NTFPs.

Pharmaceutical uses of NTFPs generate the most significant revenues. Extracts from the bark of the Pausinystalia yohimbe (popularly known in Cameroon as the African viagra), are consumed locally as a cure for many ailments and is sold in North America and Europe as an aphrodisiac and a stimulant in soft drinks.

The total value of yohimbe bark exports from Cameroon was estimated at US$600,000 in 1998 and has been growing each year. It is an evergreen tree native to the rainforests of Cameroon, Nigeria and the two Congos (DRC and Brazzaville).

Similarly, the bark of Prunus Africana, which grows widely in the same region and all the way down to East and Southern Africa (see NA, June 2004 p22), is used to extract a chemical cocktail used for the treatment of benign prostate hyperplasia in Europe and North America. Cameroon earned US$700,000 from exporting Prunus africana in 1999, but Western pharmaceutical companies who bought it earned US$200m.

The Centre for International Forestry Research says nine NTFPs, including bush mango, the bark and fruits of Garcinia cola, palm nuts, cola nuts, and the African pear, generated US$1.9m in revenues for Cameroon during the first half of 1996.

Ancistrocladus korupensis is another vine recently discovered in the Korup forest of southwestern Cameroon whose leaves have been found to demonstrate "in vitro" activity against the Aids viruses, HIV-1 and HIV-2. But the problem hindering its use now is that it also destroys human cells, thus killing the patient. So scientists are studying ways of isolating the element that destroys the human cells.

Baillonella toxisperma, better known by its trade name Moabi, is one of the most highly valued timber trees in the Central African forests. The oil extracted from it is so highly valued that it is rarely traded or found in the markets. Women who are the primary users prefer to keep it for themselves.

The tree is estimated to be of far greater value for its oil-producing capacity than for timber, but the short-term profit gained by logging overwhelms its long-term oil-producing value. It is also an important source of food for elephants.

In Cameroon, the economic crisis of the 1990s made the prices of Western pharmaceutical products very expensive for the people, thereby increasing their dependency on medicinal plants. Sadly the high demand for eru has driven wild populations of this leafy vine to extinction in much of southwestern Cameroon and Nigeria.

In the case of Prunus africana, Cameroon can supply approximately 200 tonnes a year sustainably. Yet, over 3,500 tonnes were harvested and exported in 1999. Worse, for both Prunus and Yohimbe, current "sustainable" harvesting practices that partially strip the bark from live trees expose them to stemboring insects.

Of the 20 most economically valuable NTFPs in Central Africa, 11 are said to be unsustainably harvested. Beyond poor harvesting methods, NTFPs are also threatened by the rapidly disappearing forest habitat in which they occur.

But there is hope. Research by conservationists and scientists at the Limbe Botanic Gardens in southwestern Cameroon and the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Yaounde, has shown that these products, most of which are harvested only in the wild, can now be grown together with crops on farms. The idea now, says Zacharie Tchoundjeu of ICRAF-Cameroon, is to save many of these invaluable trees threatened by deforestation by bringing them out of the forest and domesticating them.

"This means we apply the same basic horticultural techniques to some of these valuable species that have been used in the past to bring us fruit trees that are now highly domesticated, such as the mango," Tchoundjeu says. "We start by asking the farmers in each country which trees are most important to them. By so doing, they tell us which trees most urgently need to be domesticated so that they can plant them on their farms."

"This is a win-win system," adds Nouhou Ndam of the Limbe Botanic Gardens. "Farmers now cultivate these trees using methods that require cheap labour and financial input while producing higher yields. At the same time, these methods are environmentally sustainable, thus enabling farmers to improve their livelihood while protecting natural resources."

Extension strategies include training and interactive workshops with local farmers and producing manuals for interested farmers. At the same time, farmers are encouraged to form common initiative groups to train other farmers themselves.