Our local newspaper, Zoutpansberger, recently partnered with the Baobab Foundation, to launch a school project to boost the region’s wild baobab population.Coined the Baobab Champion competition, more than 230 baobab starter-kits with 15 seeds each inside, were distributed to participating pupils of 4 local schools. That amounts to 3450 potential new Baobab trees for South Africa! Youth excited to create […] Continue Reading
Baobab wilding is about enrichment-planting of baobabs back into the wild. To prepare for this we are growing baobab trees from seed. Some are in Dr Sarah Venter’s nursery at EcoProducts and other trees are being grown by community members in villages around Venda, oftentimes with precious, little available water in the arid environments where Baobabs thrive. The trees in […] Continue Reading
A new method to help protect Baobabs from elephant damage at Mapungubwe has been suggested, hold your breath, it contains fermented elephant dung! Mapungubwe is one of South Africa’s national parks in the far north, bordering onto Zimbabwe and Botswana along the Limpopo River, well-known for its many beautiful Baobab trees dotting the typical rocky Bushveld landscapes. You might remember […] Continue Reading
The enrollment of 20 preschoolers to the first and only, brand-new crèche and pre-school in the rural village of Dambale, caused a whole lot of excitement. Although the school-buildings were finished last year the process of getting a long list of basic equipment like tables, chairs, mattresses, cupboards and educational toys, got a boost, thanks to funding from Lather skincare […] Continue Reading
We baobab guardians from the Baobab Foundation in South Africa, are all SO impressed with and in awe of this wise baobab hero from Burkina Faso – to be seen in the YouTube video-link done by Aljazeera, below. The visionary El Hadji Salifou Ouédraogo, has planted more than 3000 Baobabs in his life, with single minded focus, starting 47 years […] Continue Reading
Watch this: Koffi Bepe, a young Gabonese engineering student wanted to know more about the commercial value of African Baobabs. Through the African Baobab Alliance website, he ended up interviewing one of their founding members; South African baobab specialist Dr Sarah Venter, for his quirky, down to earth podcast, ‘Last Week Review”. What follows is an interesting slice-of-life-discussion between two […] Continue Reading
December in the southern hemisphere, Limpopo and it is time to measure the Baobab guardians’ trees again. Did they grow fatter and higher and more handsome than before? Sarah and Prince headed out on the 14th December to measure up the Guardians’ baobab babies. It’s the beginning of the growing season, the trees had not put on a lot of […] Continue Reading
The African Baobab (Adansonia digitata) is a truly trans-continental species. It is found right across Africa, from West Africa through to East Africa and down to Southern Africa. They have an unusual life-history in that they are physically larger and live longer than most flowering plants on earth. Pollinators more vulnerable than Baobabs Although some researchers suggest that baobabs may […] Continue Reading
Baobabs and elephants have been living in the same habitat for centuries. However, as the habitat for elephants shrink due to changing land use, they get boxed into fences with herds ever increasing on smaller and smaller patches of land. Baobabs and other trees are then being browsed more intensely, with the result that many trees do not get enough […] Continue Reading