The Role of Institutional Arrangements and Policy on the Conservation, Utilization and Commercialization of Indigenous Fruits in Southern Africa - Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics: Domestication, Utilization and Commercialization - page 319

17.4 Conclusions
The management of NWFP from natural and cultivated sources is very important
for the livelihoods of people in Africa. IFTs play a key role in food security and
support rural development, as most activities in this field are people-orientated,
create employment, provide cash income and help in the attainment of the
MDGs. Several programmes are under way in the management of these natural
resources, and thousands of farmers who are now aware of the social and
economic importance of IFT are reaping benefits. Most countries in southern
Africa are undergoing policy and legal reforms and devolving powers regarding
the management of natural resources to communities, after recognizing the
benefits that follow from this in rural development. It has been realized that
better-integrated institutions with traditional, social cultural and economic
incentives and backed up with moral and political legitimacy at local level are
more effective in the management of natural resources. Devolvement should
ensure community ownership and involvement in decisions regarding the use of
their natural resources. A holistic multi-sectoral approach involving communities,
non-governmental organizations, governments and private sectors is needed in
order to improve the development of IFTs.
While several regulations and by-laws exist to regulate IFTs, the bane of
these laws is lack of effective implementation. Coherent government policies
that support community-based forest product enterprises are needed, including
mechanisms to make credit more available to small enterprises (such as the
recognition of stands of commercial tree species as collateral) and the removal
of counterproductive price controls. To inspire policy makers to support rural
enterprises with a coherent policy framework, better accounting of the
economic importance of community-based forest product enterprises, such as
has been proposed by the FAO, should be implemented. These will include a
system for grouping community-based forest product enterprise trade statistics
within existing commodity classification systems (Chandrasekharan, 1993).
There is also a need to analyse the legal aspects, such as access to
resources and user rights and, how they affect different social groups within the
communities. Assessment of the social and institutional environment entails
investigation into the indirect benefits of the project for the community, and the
tradeoffs involved in IFT domestication, fruit collection and commercialization.
In the development of IFTs, social and institutional criteria must be considered
as equally important as the economic, resource management and technical
criteria. A practical course of action must involve assessment of the direct and
indirect potential impacts of proposed projects on the community in order to
design socially sensitive activities and to minimize (or eliminate) potential
negative impacts on women and other vulnerable groups within the
community, investigate sources of capital for small-scale industries and the
opportunities for community members to obtain access to formal credit.