Forest Products, Livelihoods and Conservation

2 Commercialisation of non-timber forest products in Africa: history, context and prospects

contexts, so often missing in integrated conservation and development projects

(Lawrence 2003). To date, and despite massive investment in the NTFP sector, a

number of basic conceptual issues remain unresolved in order to better position

NTFPs within conservation and development strategies (Ruiz-Pérez and Arnold

1996; Arnold and Ruiz-Pérez 1998).

To that end the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) developed

the project ‘Assessment of the potential for non-timber forest products–based

development’, which is an attempt to address this problem and to improve

our understanding of NTFP systems through a comparative and formal analysis

of a wide range of case studies of forest product development (Ruiz-Pérez and

Byron 1999; Belcher and Ruiz-Pérez 2001). A standardised set of descriptors

was developed to capture the key ecological, technological, socio-economic

and institutional aspects of forest resource production, processing and trade.

The goal of this NTFP Case Comparison project is to:

• Create typologies of cases


• Identify conditions associated with particular kinds of development and
  conservation


• Develop and test hypotheses about forest product development

Collaborators from 27 countries, representing 47 institutions in Africa, Asia

and Latin America were identified and recruited, contributing a total of 62

case studies to the analysis. The criteria for selecting individual cases included:

• That the forest product has demonstrably significant commercial and
  trade value (i.e. it is traded in the cash economy)


• That the production, processing and marketing system has been subject
  to prior research, with data available on at least 70% of the variables


• The presence of an individual or team of researchers willing to collect
  additional data to complete the case study documentation and to
  participate in the comparative analysis


• The need to include an adequate representation of a wide range of cases

This chapter discusses the multidimensional issues surrounding NTFPs in

Africa through a summary of the 17 cases undertaken by researchers across

the continent as part of the Case Comparison project, which are presented in

this book. The subsequent chapters are grouped according to the end use of

the particular NTFP: (i) medicinal, hygiene and cosmetic plants; (ii) fruits and

oils; (iii) woodcarving and wood products; (iv) fibres and weaving products;

and (v) animal products. The location of each case is presented in Figure 1.

The most important characteristics of each case are presented in Table 1.

Background to the Case Comparison project in Africa

Seventeen case studies were performed in 10 different African countries on

NTFPs with a range of production, processing and marketing characteristics.

Each of the 17 NTFPs chosen has been commercially traded for at least half a

century or, in the case of chewsticks (Garcinia spp.) and shea butter (Vittelaria

paradoxa), for hundreds of years, and each product reveals strong annual

sales figures, often in the US$ millions.

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