The CEO of the Bangem-based NGO, Community Action for Development, CAD, Martin Etone, recently, handed over some 50 wheel-barrows, jerry cans, spades, shovels, cutlasses and other items to some 25 Prunus Africana farmers in the Muanenguba Mountain area in Bangem.

Etone said the equipment, financed by a grant from the French Embassy in Cameroon, was to help the farmers in a project aimed at promoting the domestication and mass planting of the Prunus Africana trees within the Muanenguba Mountain area.

The Prunus Africana or pygeumafricanum, as it is scientifically known, is a medicinal plant species known to contain vital elements which are said to be very good for the treatment of prostate cancer and other ailments. It is found in Cameroon and some Sub African countries, only. Locally, the barks are used for the treatment of fevers, stomach pains, malaria and other disorders of the human system.

Owing to its high medicinal value, the demand for prunus, in recent years, by Western pharmaceutical companies, tended to increase geometrically. The lure, too, to make as much money as possible from its sale by locals, led to an uncontrolled and unsustainable harvesting of the barks by just anyone.

This uncontrolled action by locals in Cameroon’s prunus areas, such as in the Muanenguba Mountain area, quickly saw the populations of these trees dwindle to dangerously low levels as whole trees were felled to get the barks without any replanting.

“Prunus is a tree that has been subjected to so many threats. In fact, if you go up the Muanenguba, you will find that people cut down the trees before they de-bark them. Other peel off the whole stem and the tree, eventually, dies,” Etone said.

He said it is owing to this that his NGO, CAD, began a prunus conservation project in 2011 with the support of the French Embassy. Since then, he said, CAD set up a prunus tree nursery which it has been offering to farmers to plant in their farms and even around their compounds. Thus, the donation of the equipment was a complementary effort aimed at further assisting the farmers in this venture.

“I am very impressed with what God has done to us through the CAD Coordinator. I pray God should open more doors for him,” said one of the farmers, Anna AhoneMetuge. She said her group has been in the prunus business for eight years and she has personally planted some 300 trees.

“Just a few weeks ago, CAD supported us with nursed prunus trees,” she added. Meantime, Augustine Esume, another farmer from Muelong, said his group had some two hectares of land already planted and a nursery of some 1,063 trees. He said he was very thankful to CAD because the jerry can was going to help them to properly water their trees.

“The jerry can will help us so much because we were using but a cup to do the watering and it was taking so much time,” Esumbe said.

Other farmers, like Divine Ndiabe, observed that there are other NGOs that get such assistance but it never gets to the intended beneficiaries.

The occasion was presided at by Clement Sako, who represented the Divisional Delegate for the Ministry of Environment in the KupeMuanenguba Division. He urged the farmers to show their support to CAD’s endeavours by multiplying their efforts in planting the trees.

The Coordinator of CAD was assisted by several of his staffers, among them the Chief Field Officer of CAD, Daniel EtoneNkwelle.