The Communal Management of Forests in the Semi‐arid and Sub‐humid Regions of Africa: Past Practice and Prospects for the Future

Background

This article is based on an extensive literature search to analyze indigenous forestry practices in the dryland regions of anglophone and francophone regions of Africa. The authors drew on biology, forestry, and ethnographic material and was written with the aim of encouraging practitioners to involve peoples living near forests into the land management strategies.

Conclusions & Takeaways

The authors found that in indigenous cultures individuals who use the land are the owners of the land and hence ownership and management go hand in hand yet land tenure is often not adequately addressed in the regions studied. Moreover, official government foresters typically have little knowledge on the best management for dry tropical forests and a lot of indigenous knowledge remains to be collected. Yet, community leaders that once enforced best land practices have been side-lined by governments, beginning with the colonial system that initially dismantled it. Finall the paper concludes that demographical changes, sedentarization and climate change have caused collapse of social-political structures and disregard of traditional farming methods and consequentially woodlot management is affected.