Forestry and the crisis in Africa

This issue of Unasylva focuses on Africa. A large part of the continent has been overrun by drought in successive years, and millions of people are exposed to hunger and malnutrition. In many African countries, cultivation is because of hunger - rapidly expanding into forest land and areas of low rainfall. This process, coupled with necessarily unmanaged exploitation for fuelwood, fodder and other basic goods and services that forests and trees provide, has led to a progressively increasing rate of deforestation. That has brought about general environmental degradation and instability and, in their wake, depletion of the resource base and even desertification over vast areas of land.