Insights from the dialogue on the bamboo sector development in West Africa

INBAR in collaboration with Natureherit hosted a dialogue with cross-continental multi-actors on the bamboo sector development in West Africa.

On 3 March, 338 registrants from 62 countries and more live participants virtually attended the webinar “A Multi-Actor Dialogue on Bamboo Sectoral Development for a Green Circular Economy in West Africa”. The dialogue objective was to gather cross-continental multi-actors to activate practical exchanges and discover the best development opportunities and investment-financial models for the bamboo sectors in West Africa. Africa accounts for 13.3% of the global bamboo resources with a huge market potential waiting to be unleashed.

The webinar was held with the initiative of the INBAR West Africa Regional Office (WARO) and supported by Natureherit DC, a spatial planning and green transition consultancy from The Netherlands. Besides many participants joining from Africa, the webinar attracted worldwide interest with participants from Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America.

Dialogue Insights

In his opening speech, Prof. Foday M. Jaward, Hon. Minister of Environment of Sierra Leone, explained the urgent need for sustainable use and protection of forest resources in the country and the entire West Africa Region. “With recent climate change challenges and coupled with the high rate of timber exploitation, there is now a strong national desire to develop the bamboo and rattan sector.” He called on support and cooperation in 5 concrete steps for community-based forest management and green economic growth with bamboo.

Dr. Ernest Nti Acheampong, Director of INBAR WARO, explained the bamboo distribution and species map in West Africa and shared about various bamboo sectoral projects emerging and operating in the region in recent years. He pointed out how INBAR is working with the governments and sectoral players continuously to overcome the investment and development barriers for bamboo sectors, such as lacking policy and data, and the underutilisation of various sustainable and green financial tools.

Mr. Iwan Meister from the Dutch Development Bank (FMO), explained the blended finance approach of the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development which support reforestation related projects around the world and Mr. Fengshu Liang from the Zhejiang Anji Rural Commercial Bank (AJRCB), representing the vice director Mr. Yunfei Mei, explained how green inclusive financial services supported Anji County, in the Chinese Zhejiang Province, to become a globally important bamboo production hub. FMO and AJRCB are the first Development Financial Institutions to join the INBAR E-learning Programme. They provide investment, financial and technical support to rural economic development with reforestation in different models.

Ms. Marigold Adu, a young entrepreneur in bamboo cultivation and charcoal processing, called out some key barriers in the sector regarding the sectoral side of the financing namely the consolidation and upscale of high-quality bamboo product value-chains, the cooperation between sectoral players and networks to build up bankable project cases and the development of market information systems.

A special guest of the roundtable, Mr. Tansug Ok from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), pointed out how West Africa could learn from China’s bamboo development experiences, to develop a sound demand-pull strategy and feasible supply chain, increase the utilization rate of bamboo materials through cooperative partnerships, mainstreaming bamboo in construction and energy and creating bases for investments on large-scale bamboo production and processing. He also informed the audience about the new UNCTAD report  ‘Commodities at a glance: Special issue on bamboo’, with a focus on building and construction.

Regarding inter-regional investment and finance, Mr. Luc Boeraeve, president of the American Bamboo Society and secretary of the Belgian Bamboo Society observed the historical and regional interactions between Europe, Asia and Africa over bamboo, as well as the investment interests from Europe and globally for the bamboo sector development in Africa.

The closing remarks were given by Mr. Michael Kwaku, INBAR WARO National Coordinator for Ghana, who thanked all the presenters and summed up the learnings from the webinar and concluded on the important role of partnerships, both in the region and from outside of Africa, to accelerate the moving-forward of the bamboo sector.

From Dialogue to Action

The lively discussion in the dialogue sparked a call to action and announcements including:

• The Ministry of Environment of Sierra Leone is searching for support for the development of the bamboo and rattan sector, with a road map for implementation, in partnership with INBAR for technical supervision.
• The Chinese Ministry of Commerce, under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, confirmed the preparation of the construction of a China-Africa Bamboo Center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
• The generation of the Development Capacity Evaluation (DCE) on Bamboo Sectoral Development in West Africa Region, a science-based innovative reporting on regional status for bamboo cultivation, industrialisation and commercialisation. The DCE will be hosted in the platform “Knowledge@Terra Classrooms – Bamboo and Rattan”, which will be used to inform and exchange among various actors, especially sectoral players, policymakers, investors and financial services.
• This webinar and its products are an initiative to broadcast to the open ‘Community of Practices’ and promote the bamboo sectoral cooperation and green investment finance across the INBAR Member States, donors, partners and e-learning stakeholders.

The webinar was moderated by Ms. Wei Jin, INBAR Capacity-building Manager and Ms. Xiaoying Liu, Chief Spatial Planner and Territorial Development Strategist of Natureherit.

The video recording of the dialogue is available on Youtube or FutureLink
Learn more about the Africa Bamboo and Rattan Congress (ABARC 2022)
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Read the latest issue of Bamboo and Rattan Update which focus on Africa