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Our work > Preventing plant extinctions > Africa
AfricaBGCI has run an Africa Programme for many years. Our focus has been on strengthening botanic gardens across this incredible continent: rich and diverse in habitats, species and cultures. BGCI has recently launched a new project in Africa: Enhancing tree conservation and forest restoration in Africa: This three year project (Oct 2012 - Oct 2015) will identify the status and distribution of endangered trees in ex situ collections and coordinate the resources of African botanic gardens to establish new partnerships and strategies for increasing the use of indigenous tree species, including endangered trees, in restoration initiatives. Practical forest restoration activities will be supported in Kenya and Uganda and forest restoration throughout Africa will be facilitated and promoted. As part of this project we are encouraging African botanic gardens to contribute a list of the native trees held in their collections to our online database, Plantsearch. For more information about this project and how you can contribute, click here. This project builds upon a previous BGCI project called Grow Africa analysing collections of native trees held in botanic gardens in Uganda, DRC and Kenya. You can read about this project in our report Botanic Gardens, Endangered Trees and Reforestation in Africa
Review of tree red listing in Africa: As part of our work to support the Global Trees Campaign, we are also undertaking a review of tree red listing in Africa. Through contact with botanic gardens and red listing authorities and a literature review, we are compiling a review of tree red listing assessments and publications that have been completed to date across Africa. If you have any data to contribute to this review we would welcome your support. Please contact us.
Uganda and MadagascarIn Uganda and Madagascar the harvesting and processing of wild plants for food, medicine and building materials is critical to the survival of millions of people - but the wild plant resource is rapidly diminishing and there is an urgent need for the implementation of effective sustainable harvest methods. In these countries, supported by SwedBio, we coordinated a project working with local communities to undertake conservation assessments on wild plant species that are used for food and medicine and highlight the Important Plant Areas (IPAs) in which they occur. This work was implemented in collaboration with IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and was presented on the occasion of the 4th IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain, 5-14 October 2008. The outcomes of the workshop 'Wild plants for food and medicine – assessing and conserving plants for people’ can be accessed here. Read more about our work in Madagascar and Uganda. East Africa Our East Africa Biodiversity Infomatics project, funded by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation, helped to increase regional knowledge and information on plant biodiversity for three types of primary data - taxonomy, biodiversity status and usage. Find out more about this project.
Education is a key aspect of our Africa Programme and our 7th International Congress on Education in Botanic Gardens was held from 1st – 6th November 2009 in Durban, South Africa. Contact us if you would like further details about our work in Africa
We need your help to enable the expansion of these successful programmes of work
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