Home
Cameroon: Strengthening Forward, Backward Linkages In the Rattan And Bamboo Sectors
By Ebenezer Tabot-Tabot
In Cameroon, and definitely in Africa, those who harvest or process rattan and bamboo are local, mostly illiterate, villagers and equally illiterate middlemen and craftsmen who ply their rattan and bamboo trade, in various forms, in towns and cities.
For these people, rattan and bamboo are simply rattan and bamboo. They know nothing about, and are certainly not interested in what experts call 'taxonomy.' Species differentiation is not an issue either.
Without being able to give scientific specifications, these local people appreciate the variety and are able to differentiate between the various strains of rattan and bamboo found in their forests. In the same vein, middlemen and craftsmen also know which rattan or bamboo strains are most suitable for the manufacture of different products.
The point here is that for rattan and bamboo, like for all other Non-Timber Forest Products, local empirical knowledge is as important and relevant as scientific knowledge. The difference is that local knowledge focuses on use values, while scientific knowledge probes many more parameters ranging from ecological, through biological to socio-economic, etc.
Read more here.
World Bamboo Day 2010
