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In the Benishangul-Gumuz region in Ethiopia bamboo is an important resource and currently, and when I visited Ethiopia this fall, I could see that the bamboo was flowering. One of the challenges for bamboo farmers is that bamboo dies immediately after it flowers, and because huge crops of the same type of bamboo flower at the same time, a lot of bamboo in the region will soon be gone.

It could be as long as five years before another crop of bamboo can be harvested in BSG and forest fires and road construction are compounding the challenge. This is a huge problem.

Bamboo grows rapidly, so when it is plentiful, people use it for everything—it is an essential source of income for people in the region and it is used in food, shelter, fences, tools, firewood, furniture, textiles and many other things. When that valuable resource disappears it means the people who depend on it and others who depend on their products are in big trouble. Simply put, bamboo is everything to people who depend on it for survival.

So CHF and some other partner organizations have been helping farmers in the region to try and reduce that window, and to replace the bamboo that has been lost. CHF has been providing key materials like bamboo seeds and seedlings as well as technical training so that trees can see maximum growth. Nurseries were started up through the project where shoots are fostered into more developed bamboo plants.

Sherkole is the site of one of the new nurseries and it already holds well over 14,000 bamboo seedlings. It also has 500 mango trees and in other nurseries they are growing incense trees that will provide critical income for some in the coming months and years. Part of what makes bamboo a key resource is its rapid growth—so soon there will be thousands more trees to replace the ones that were lost.

By the end of the project, CHF and its partners will have contributed significantly to the realization of bamboo’s economic potential in Benishangul-Gumuz through better understanding of the need to nurture, protect and manage it effectively. Only through a concerted initiative like this will bamboo become the engine of growth that it has the potential to be in this region and a significant contributor to family incomes and sustainable livelihoods.

David Rhody is CHF’s  Acting Regional Director for Africa