By Mary Mwendwa
Nairobi, Kenya: This week, six African initiatives have become the first from their respective countries to join the Global Landscapes Forum Network (GLFx) . The organizations will work towards deepening their impact on ecosystem restoration and community development. They are expected to work with 14 other chapters on the continent, along with many more in Asia and Latin America.
The Community-led initiatives from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe are set to join the Global Landscapes Forum chapters network, aiming to enhance their impact.
They are the first organizations from their respective countries to join the network and will align with 14 other African chapters to advance environmental action across the continent.
GLFx is a network of locally rooted organizations transforming landscapes from the ground up and paving the way for policy change in favour of landscapes and people. It will help connect these six new community-oriented chapters with organizations and partners worldwide and offer access to learning, visibility, and funding opportunities to bolster their landscape management, governance, and restoration activities, scaling their impact.
The African organizations joining GLFx in 2024 will focus on organic farming, community livelihoods, biodiversity conservation, environmental education, tree planting, gender equality, entrepreneurial endeavors, and much more.
The new African GLFx chapters are :
The GLFx Kivu chapter focuses on the development of rural women, tree planting and restoration, solar energy implementation, and the enhancement of cookstove efficiency. It works with women and girls in the South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they have established four cooperatives of women farmers, planted 2,000 trees, and distributed 2,500 improved cookstoves to reduce charcoal demand. Spearheaded by the organization Women Concern, the chapter works through cooperatives and implements the Healthy Village model, which encompasses projects aimed at education, health care, and nutritious livelihoods.
The GLFx Nyanza chapter, led by the Dufatanye Organization in Nyanza, Southern Province of Rwanda, aims to alleviate poverty for over 2,100 people. The chapter implements agricultural, health, and education programs in six communities, and, through its Village of Hope program, it provides families with fruit trees, fodder trees, organic fertilizers, and hens. This is complemented by household finance, health care, agroforestry, and kitchen gardening training.
The GLFx Kenema chapter’s activities revolve around environmental education and curriculum development, school gardens, and volunteer programs within the Kenema district, Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. This youth-led chapter, hosted by SL Environmental Matters, offers a training program for local teachers to incorporate restoration concepts into school curriculums, organizes tree-planting campaigns with children, and seeks to establish a community eco-tourism program.
The GLFx Massai Steppe chapter collaborates with the Indigenous Massai community in the Simanjiro district, Manyara Region, Tanzania. Led by the Tanzania Conservation and Community Empowerment Initiative (TACCEI), it prioritizes community-led conservation, sustainable agriculture as a viable business, and the mitigation of gender-based violence. For instance, it will train 150 women in kitchen gardening and 200 in entrepreneurship. It also centers on wildlife research, especially regarding human-carnivore wildlife conflicts.
The GLFx Virunga chapter, under the leadership of the Adventure Learning and Community Development Initiative (ALCDI), operates within the biodiversity-rich Virunga and focuses on food forests, rural restoration, and eco-tourism. It will work with 1500 farmers from the Kiguezi sub-region, in the Greater Virunga Range, Uganda, aiming to engage more to reach 100,000 food forest creators and ambassadors by 2030 through its training-of-trainers approach and sustainability strategy.
The GLFx Harare chapter concentrates on rural food production cycles, seed banking, entrepreneurship, and responsible mining in the Mutare District of Zimbabwe. Led by the Rima Africa Trust in partnership with the Tariro Foundation of Zimbabwe Trust and the Centre for Natural Resources Governance, this chapter works with youth, women, and persons with disabilities, and together they have established 300 community gardens and a seed bank comprising 80 indigenous species.
