Medicinal Plant Conservatory

In Senegal, as across sub-Saharan Africa, medicinal plants are the population’s main source of medicine. The high cost of pharmaceutical industry medicines leads patients and their traditional practitioners to continue relying on, and even return to, herbalism and wild-harvested plants.

The overexploitation of wild plants, combined with the retreat of vegetation cover caused by desertification and climate change, is leading to the scarcity, and in some cases disappearance, of numerous medicinal plants. This is resulting in a decline in Senegalese flora, a real threat to biodiversity, as well as a loss of ancestral knowledge and traditional medicinal practices.

The association Santorun has partnered with the rural community of Diender, located 50 km from Dakar and bordering the Cayar Marine Protected Area, to find a solution to these problems.

The project’s objective is to create a medicinal plant conservatory within the Diender community’s territory. The specific objectives are to safeguard the biodiversity of Senegalese flora, particularly medicinal plants, to produce plants and derived products giving local populations and traditional practitioners access to medicinal plants for primary healthcare — by cultivating rare or threatened species and reintroducing endangered or locally extinct species — to create an economic activity in the region, and finally to raise awareness among young people and local populations of the need to respect their environment in order to safeguard their future.