Plant-based traditional medicine is used by 85% of the population in West Africa. The high cost of pharmaceutical industry medicines leads patients and their traditional practitioners to continue relying on herbalism and wild-harvested plants. With widespread deforestation and climate change affecting the Sahelo-Sudanian zones, certain species are being overexploited and are becoming too rare to be collected in the wild. This is resulting in a decline in plant diversity, a real threat to biodiversity, as well as a loss of ancestral knowledge and traditional medicinal practices.
Five communes in the lagoon area of southern Benin embarked in 2004 on a process of coordinated territorial management and joined together in an association, the Intercommunal Council for Eco-development, or CIED. The CIED’s purpose is the joint management of their territories and the lagoon, and the implementation of demonstration development activities (small-scale livestock farming, salt production, reforestation, etc.).
This project aims to establish a medicinal plant botanical garden in Kpomassé, at the centre of the 5 communes making up the CIED.
This two-hectare garden will be used to develop techniques for collecting seeds and seedlings from the wild, as well as for propagating, cultivating, harvesting and processing around fifty plant species used in traditional medicine.
It will supply traditional healers with medicinal plants and derived products for primary healthcare, by cultivating rare or threatened species and reintroducing endangered or locally extinct species.
It will also serve as a model and teaching garden for traditional practitioners in the area who wish to produce their own remedies.
In time, it will achieve financial sustainability through the sale of products and plants, becoming an economic activity for the region.