Women reshaping Africa’s forests

Across Africa’s forests, women have long sustained landscapes, communities, and ecological knowledge systems, often without recognition. Today, their leadership is increasingly shaping the future of responsible forest stewardship itself.

From restoration and scientific research to governance and sustainable forest economies, women across FSC-certified landscapes are helping redefine what forest stewardship looks like in practice.

As part of FSC’s global Where Women Took the Forest campaign, this story highlights two FSC members whose work reflects a broader transformation unfolding across the continent.

Delphine Ahoussi: rebuilding forests, reclaiming leadership

In the classified state-owned forests of Côte d’Ivoire, women have long worked close to the land, gathering water, tending crops, collecting medicinal plants, and sustaining households through knowledge passed from one generation to the next. Much of that labour remained invisible in formal forestry systems. Today that reality is changing. 

At the centre of this shift is Delphine Ahoussi, President of the Association MALEBI, whose work has helped move women from the margins of forest management into positions of leadership, technical expertise, and decision-making.

“Our traditions naturally consider women to be protectors of water and, by extension, natural resources,” she says.

Across Côte d’Ivoire, women are now taking on roles that extend far beyond subsistence work: managing nurseries for large-scale restoration projects, organizing cooperatives, leading agroforestry initiatives, and helping structure more transparent and sustainable forest economies.

Under Côte d’Ivoire’s Forest Investment Project (PIF 2), women living near classified forests have become central to reforestation efforts, producing seedlings to restore degraded landscapes. Through MALEBI, women and youth groups from forests such as Laka, Matiemba, Fêtêkro, and Ahua have also received leadership training designed to strengthen their participation in forest governance.

MALEBI manages the 4,500-hectare Ahua Classified Forest under a partnership agreement with SODEFOR and has also contributed to innovative projects exploring blockchain-based charcoal traceability systems, demonstrating that women are not only participating in forestry systems, but helping modernize them.

Through FSC processes and standards development, women are also increasingly participating in conversations that shape how responsible forest management is implemented at national level. Delphine Ahoussi is a member of the national standards development group of Côte d’Ivoire and has contributed to the development of FSC standards for the country over the past two years.

As one of the world's leading producers of natural rubber, Côte d'Ivoire is aligning economic development with sustainable forest management. The new standard opens opportunities for women to participate more actively in forestry enterprises, restoration initiatives, and sustainable supply chains connected to international markets.

The work is far from easy. Women continue to face barriers linked to land access, limited equipment, institutional recognition, and climate vulnerability. Ahoussi recalls the devastation of seeing an entire reforestation site destroyed by bushfires, wiping out years of collective effort in a matter of hours.

Yet even in loss, her conviction remains unshaken. “A woman who plants a tree grows an entire community.”

Dr Seraphine Ebenye Mokake: from invisible labour to scientific leadership

Deep in the forests of the Congo Basin, field inventory teams can spend weeks navigating difficult terrain under intense humidity, isolation, and physical exhaustion. For years, Dr Seraphine Ebenye Mokake was often the only woman among them. Today, she is helping shape the future of African forestry through science, research leadership, and policy engagement.

A botanist, forest ecologist, Senior Lecturer at the University of Douala, and principal investigator under the Future Africa Research Leadership Fellowship at the University of Pretoria, Dr Mokake represents a generation of African women transforming forestry from within. Women are becoming researchers, consultants, lecturers, and decision-makers helping redefine how forests are understood and managed.

“Women contribute the data that justifies conservation, the techniques that allow restoration, and the knowledge that keeps forest management connected to communities,” Dr Mokake explains.

She also believes women bring a different relationship to the forest itself – one that often sees forests not only as timber resources, but as ecosystems connected to food systems, medicine, biodiversity, and long-term community resilience. 

Across Central Africa, more women are entering fields once considered exclusively male. They are conducting carbon stock assessments, leading biodiversity studies, using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies, influencing conservation policy, and contributing to international frameworks such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) and Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT).

Dr Mokake has also been an active contributor to the revision of Cameroon’s FSC national forest management standard, particularly through the integration of non-timber forest products, which remain essential to the livelihoods of women, forest-dependent communities, and smallholder economies. With the approval of the revised standard in 2025, new opportunities are emerging for women’s groups and other minority communities to strengthen sustainable businesses connected to responsible forest management and international markets.

Forestry remains deeply male-dominated, particularly in remote field operations. Dr Mokake describes years spent working in teams where she was often the only woman, navigating not only difficult terrain but persistent assumptions about women’s capabilities in scientific and field-based forestry work.

The challenges extend beyond the forest itself. Women continue to face barriers linked to land tenure, underrepresentation in leadership positions, limited institutional support, and the constant balancing of professional and family responsibilities. However, more women are becoming principal investigators, forestry lecturers, members of traditional councils, and leaders within conservation institutions. 

For Dr Mokake, the future of African forestry will be shaped through collaboration between women and men working together within the same landscapes.

Still, she believes one truth is becoming impossible to ignore. “The future of the forest is in the hands of women.”