By Dr Sarah Venter

Glender Kwilimba does honors project on baobab planting program

Glender Kwilimba is an honors student at the University of Venda.  Her honors project is to assess the success of the Baobab Guardians project.  The Baobab Foundation has sponsored her field work which she conducted in May 2025.  Dr Sarah Venter will be co-supervising her project with Prof. Swanepoel from the University of Venda.  Glender interviewed 57 Baobab Guardians and [...] Continue Reading
By Dr Sarah Venter

Baobab Guardian program comes to a successful end

Ten years ago (2014) the Baobab Foundation established the Baobab Guardians program.  Women from different villages in Niyani volunteered to be Guardians of young baobab trees to protect them from browsing goats.  The program planted 101 baobab trees and successfully brought them up the height that they would flourish for the next few centuries. This week the last nine Guardians [...] Continue Reading
By Dr Sarah Venter

Three more baobab seedlings to ready to grow into adult trees

Baobab trees in Dambale village were measured as scheduled in April 2024.  Three more trees have reached their target height of 3 meters.  This brings the total number to five of the nine trees in the village that no longer need to be protected from goats.  The trees in Dambale village were planted as small seedlings in December 2020.  The [...] Continue Reading
By Dr Sarah Venter

Livhuwani’s baobab tree

Livhuwani tells us about her tree (Video) Livhuwani Nelitshindwi planted her tree 6 years ago as part of the Baobab Guardians project.  The project started in 2014 encouraged people in rural villages to plant and protect baobab seedlings from being browsed by domestic animals.  When trees reach 3 meters high they are then safe from browsers and can continue to […] Continue Reading

By Elthea Schlesinger

The last but not the least of our Baobab Guardians

We have 9 more trees to measure in the Baobab Guardians program around November this year and then we have accomplished more than our initial objectives for the Guardians that we started off with in 2014. Our focus onward, will be more on our exciting Baobab wilding programme. These last 9 trees are dotted around Dambale village in the Limpopo […] Continue Reading

By Dr Sarah Venter

Certificates Awarded to 54 Baobab Guardians

On the 8th December we awarded 54 certificates to the Baobab Guardians at a celebratory event held in Zwigodini village. Each Baobab Guardian had been looking after a baobab seedling from its infancy to it reaching a full 3 meters in height. Some trees took up to 6 years to reach their “safe from browsing” height and others with extra [...] Continue Reading