Medicinal Crops of Africa

The great biodiversity in the tropical forests, savannahs, and velds and unique environments of sub-Sahara Africa has provided indigenous cultures with a diverse range of plants and as a consequence a wealth of traditional knowledge about the use of the plants for medicinal purposes. Given that Africa includes over 50 countries, 800 languages, 3,000 dialects; it is a veritable treasure of genetic resources including medicinal plants. While the medicinal plant trade continues to grow globally, exports from Africa contribute little to the overall trade in natural products and generally only revolve around plant species of international interest that are indigenous to Africa. Africa is only a minor player in the global natural products market. We identified several key challenges facing the natural products sector in this region.

These include the presently limited value-addition occurring within region and as a consequence exports tend to be bulk raw materials; local markets generally largely selling unprocessed/semi-processed plant materials; the industry is large but informal and diffuse and there is limited financial resources to support research and infrastructure for both the processor and a distinct but equally important issue in the lack of financial credit available in general to the farmer in much of this region for production investments; lack of private sector investment in processing and packaging facilities; and serious issues in parts of this region surround common property resource issues (ownership and rights to land tenure; threat of over-harvesting, etc.). In addition, there is limited technical support is available to growers,

collectors, & post-harvest firms, limited expertise on appropriate germplasm and seed availability, inadequate and/or lack of processing equipment. This has resulted in a lack of or inadequate quality control and lack of product standardization. There is a very limited knowledge of foreign market demand, few market/business

contacts and the perception that there is difficulty in protecting their intellectual property.

The objective of this paper is to present an overview to some of the leading African medicinal plants in sub-Sahara Africa that are in the international trade, plus an introduction to a number of lesser-known promising medicinal plants (Table 1).

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