How rainforest agroforestry is restoring degraded land across Edo State.
The Okomu Forest Belt sits at the heart of Edo State's remaining rainforest corridor and, until recently, much of it had been fragmented by decades of unmanaged clearing.
Our restoration model pairs native hardwood replanting with community-run nurseries, so that smallholders earn income from the program long before the first commercial harvest. Biodiversity corridors are mapped first; commercial planting is designed around them, not the other way round.
Eighteen months in, canopy cover across the pilot blocks has measurably increased, and three neighboring communities have joined the program as seedling suppliers. It's early, but it's the model we're scaling across our other Edo State and South West Nigeria sites.