Non wood forest products in Africa: a regional and national overview

The report compiles country profiles for all African countries as well as regional and sub regional aggregations. The country profiles show that statistical information on non wood forest products (NWFP) at national level is scarce and unreliable. As a result most of the information presented has to be considered "tentative" and "preliminary", only reflecting the "top of the iceberg" within the large and heterogeneous group of NWFP.

However the report does attemp to draw some conclusions from its analysis:

• medicinal and edible plants are of high socio-economic importance in all sub-regions , whereas others are only of relevance in selected sub-regions (e.g. exudates in East Africa, bushmeat in Central and West Africa)
• Most of the NWFP are used at local level for subsistence and/or extra income generation.
• National and international trade in NWFP is limited to selected products
• nationally and/or internationally agreed-upon terminologies, concepts and statistics on NWFP, combined with improved methodologies for the regular collection and analysis of statistical data on NWFP are needed.