Hyacinthe, nature’s friend

Ten years of civil war and social strife have taken their toll on Congo’s natural resources. They have been de¬stroyed by desperate populations, trying to make up for the absence of reliable energy and food sup¬plies.  Some localities have been without electricity for up to 13 months.

For these reasons, people have been forced to replace elec¬trical energy with charcoal from felled trees. Hyacinthe Paka Bebi, a 36-year-old Kasangulu-based nurs¬eryman says tree domestication can help replace the DRC’s once rich and diversified tree population. 

Hyacinthe is a trained electrical engineer who left his specialty to embrace gar¬dening in Kinshasa. The garden quickly outgrew available space, compelling Hyacinthe to shift to Kasangulu in Bas Congo province, 48 kilometres away. Kasangulu is considered the bread¬basket of Kinshasa and Hyacinth was alarmed by the many mango stumps he saw in compounds.

‘These are stumps of mango trees that are felled on a daily basis to feed the 500 existing brickworks in Congo,’ Hyacinthe says. To fire 10,000 mud bricks, one needs to burn four to five mature mango trees. The conse¬quences are environmental degrada¬tion and scarcity of fruits. ‘We hardly find ripe mangoes in the market right now. People who couldn’t afford normal food could satisfy their hunger with just four good fruits, as they were by far the cheapest we could find’.

The Salvation Army, one of WorldAgroforestry’s field partners in the DRC, trained Hyacinthe in vegetative tree multiplication techniques in 2005. Since then, he has propagated and sold several thousand plants. ‘In 2006, I produced 3000 plants of Acacia spp, 600 Cymbopogon spp and 90 mango plants, some of which I have already sold,’ he proudly points out.

According to Useni Marcel, WorldAgroforestry’s representative in the DRC, Acacia spp, are a source of fuelwood and also food for breeding of edible caterpillars, a delicacy in the DRC.  The Cymbopogon spp are used to produce a popular beverage, while mango trees remain a good source of fruit. He adds that the application of techniques like grafting have gone a long way in increas¬ing mango yields while boosting plant resist¬ance to disease. The rootstocks that carry the improved varieties are well adapted to the environment.

Asked if the business is profitable, Hyacinthe responds with a smile. Without revealing his actual income, he tells us that the number of nurserymen in the locality (14 in all) is a sign that the business is lucrative – but there is a need to sharpen their marketing ap¬proach, to be able to get the best price for their produce. Product prices range from USD1 per seedling to USD15 per marcott of Garcinia mangostana (marcotts take a shorter time to mature and bear fruits); USD2 per grafted mango and USD3 for every marcott of Dacryodes edulis. These prices however, are not what buyers always pay. At times they pay as little as half the proposed price. ‘We understand that many big planta¬tions which used to buy plants have gone out of business with the current economic crisis. They cannot pay more than this’.

Nevertheless with the central role that trees have to play at many levels, in the reconstruction of this vast African coun¬try, Hyacinthe keeps going because he knows that tomorrow will be brighter.

About the project
Hyacinthe’s community is a beneficiary of “Growing out of poverty: Tree cultivation in west and central Africa for home use and markets”, a WorldAgroforestry project funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, (IFAD).  The project makes possible the propagation and cultivation of indigenous and appropriate exotic trees in degraded forest and tree-poor areas of the DRC.
Deforestation leaves the land exposed to erosion and rapid nutrient leaching. The result is low crop pro¬ductivity and food insecurity.  Despite global concern about deforestation, policies and institutions either ignore trees grown outside of designated forest areas or do not value their vital functions for livelihood and environmental services.