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Commonwealth
Forests | | |
 History
Forest research in the Commonwealth countries of Africa was structured on the Indo-Germanic
model. All countries concerned had a colonial background, although only those with cooler
climates had large-scale
European settlement and not all were originally British colonies. There is thus more variation
between these countries than between Commonwealth countries in other parts of the world;
they are subdivided as follows: West Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Cameroon
East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda Central Africa: Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi Southern
Africa: Lesotho, Swaziland, Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa African Islands:
Mauritius, Seychelles
In all countries, but especially in the smaller ones and the islands, it has often been difficult to
fund research programmes reliably even when qualified staff have been in place. Attempts to
achieve economies of scale through amalgamation or through networking have therefore been
common. An example of the former, now superseded, was the East African Agriculture and
Forestry Research Organisation (EAAFRO). The East African Herbarium still co-ordinates
many aspects of forest and tree biology especially taxonomy, and more recently some
regional forestry research has been carried out through the Southern African Development
Community (SADC). The latest initiatives for African forest research networking are
FORNESSA (Forest Research network for Sub Saharan Africa) sponsored by FAO and
IUFRO, and AFORNET (African Forest Research Network) sponsored by the African Academy
of Sciences (based in Kenya). The World Agroforestry Center (ICRAF) is based in Kenya, and
CIFOR has a field station in Africa.
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