Chief Nkunda Kashala Raymond remembers when the forests around Kibundu village, in Kasenga, gave his community caterpillars, mushrooms and wild animals in season. Over the years, repeated fires and clearing for farms and charcoal stripped them away.
We did not yet have knowledge about forest protection. For various reasons, we overexploited our forests, and the consequences affected the entire community.
Chief Nkunda Kashala Raymond, community leader in Kibundu
His village is one of ten community forest concessions in DR Congo’s Haut-Katanga province taking part in the AFR100 Support Programme, FAO reported on 21 October. The aim is to restore 7,000 hectares of degraded land and develop more than 30 economic microprojects linked to landscape restoration.
Planning before planting
The woodland is under pressure from shifting cultivation, charcoal and firewood production, uncontrolled burning, a growing population, artisanal mining and farming practices that wear out the land.
Rather than rushing to plant trees, the programme spent 2025 studying the social and economic situation in all ten concessions, reviewing their management plans and helping communities build restoration into local development budgets.
FAO reports that training in firebreaks in Kibundu has reduced how often bush fires start and how far they spread.
Miombo woodlands supply food, medicinal plants and clean water, and store carbon. Bringing them back, the programme argues, has to go hand in hand with giving people a reason to protect them.
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