i Parkia biglobosa - School of Forest Resources & Environmental ...

Tree planting and afforestation in Africa are not widely practiced. In response to
world markets and demands, certain trees have been planted or managed as cash crops in
Ghana, primarily cocoa trees in the south as well as oil palms (Bergert 2000). However,
planting of trees especially in northern Ghana is a recent idea more aggressively
introduced in the last two decades. Tree planting activity in northern Ghana exists,
although mainly done by foreigners and expatriates who have access to large tracts of
land. The Sirigu mission 12 kms away from Kandiga has a large mature mango orchard
that was planted by the Catholic missionaries in the 1950s.
Individual farmers resist tree planting on their small landholdings for several
reasons. A major constraint for the farmer is land. As the population has increased, the
land each farmer can farm has decreased, and farmers are not willing to forfeit
agricultural land for planting trees. Another reason is local superstition and fear. Several
people I interviewed stated that many villagers believe that if a man plants a tree he will
die when it begins bearing fruit. Gender roles also discourage tree planting. In northern
Ghana, men are the managers of the land and do not value the direct benefit of tree
planting for maintaining the household. Traditionally, women do the majority of wood
gathering for household use. As women progressively travel farther distances to gather
wood they are thwarted from planting trees. Married women do not have rights to the
land since it is not their original home. As a result the population of local trees is
diminishing.
Parkia biglobosa is one of the trees protected in farmer’s fields and near
households. When preparing fields for farming, P. biglobosa trees are left untouched
because of their economic and cultural importance, However, as mentioned above, their
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