Research into Use: Managing Africa’s Medicinal Plants

March 30, 2010. Research into Use’s (RIU) pocket guide and policy brief series has produced a brief that outlines the need to find ways to sustainably manage Africa’s medicinal plants. RIU continues to illustrate how complex subjects can be explained simply to policy makers and the importance of effective scientific communication. The aim is to encourage partners in both the developed and developing world to invest more in communication efforts helping useful technologies become more widely adopted.

The brief ‘Future Health: Sustainable Management of Africa’s Medicinal Plants’ highlights that eighty per cent of Africans use traditional treatments made from wild native plant species and one-third depend on them entirely. As populations go up so to does use; over-exploitation is rampant. Control is imperative to sustain forest resources before they are lost, potentially denying millions access to medicines.