Can an app restore Cameroon’s native forests?

The 39-year-old then checks for possible orders of seedlings of the traditional African spice, Pébé, and avocado from farmers across the country. “I consult the platform thrice a day,” he told Fair Planet. “Thanks to the platform, I recently sold 2,000 avocado seedlings to a farmer. It eases the job of finding customers.” Kamdem's tree nursery contains roughly 20,000 avocado and 8,000 Pébé seedlings. 

My Farm Trees is a digital platform that connects seed producers like Kamdem with farmers, seed collectors, and scientists. A brainchild of the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the platform encompasses three different apps -MyFarmTrees Collector, MyFarmTrees Nursery, and MyGeoFarm - that provide real-time data on tree location, growth, and performance. These other apps help farmers decide when and how to care for their trees. 

In partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and funded by the Darwin Initiative (UK) and the Global Environment Facility, the CIAT uses the app to encourage the selection and sourcing of suitable tree species while ensuring ongoing monitoring and community engagement.

“We created MyFarmTrees primarily to empower farmers and communities to lead landscape restoration using native trees,” Christopher Kettle, Principal Scientist at CIAT, told FairPlanet. 

He explained that years of scientific research have unravelled multiple bottlenecks and underutilised opportunities for farmers in local communities to be on the frontline of resilient, adaptive and financially beneficial forest landscape restoration at scale. 

Marius Ekue, senior scientist and country representative at the Alliance, who is leading the project’s development in Cameroon, told FairPlanet the Myfarmtrees platform is helping to rebuild resilient landscapes by prioritising iconic native species like pébé, ndjassan, bush mango, moabi, safou, and iroko.

“Cameroon is home to a rich diversity of native tree species that are highly valued by local communities - not only for their fruits, spices, and nuts, but also for the ecosystem services they provide, such as shade and honey production,” Ekue said. “Yet many of these species were not being planted simply because their seeds and seedlings weren’t available,”

He added that the Alliance conducted a nationwide species prioritisation process to address this, surveying over 500 households and stakeholders.

The result was a list of 276 priority native tree species is now featured in Cameroon's Diversity for Restoration (D4R) tool. The tool guides users in selecting the most appropriate tree species and seed sources for landscape restoration and other planting initiatives.

a quarter million trees later

MyFarmTrees rewards farmers for following restoration best practices through mobile payments and guides them toward genetically diverse, locally adapted seed sources, thereby improving seedling survival from the start.

Two pilot projects have seen nearly 250,000 seedlings dispersed across 2,500 hectares in Cameroon and Kenya. Since April 2023, over 100,000 seedlings from 15 species have restored 1,250 hectares in Kenya, while 160,000 seedlings from 43 species have restored 1,363 hectares in Cameroon.

“We’ve seen strong uptake where community partnerships are active.” Said Kettle. “Over one hundred native species have been planted, thousands of farmers engaged, and tree survival tracked in real time.

“The potential is vast: linking restoration with income, carbon, and biodiversity credits. But scaling finance, tech access, and training remain challenges.”

Despite its success, the app operates in only three of Cameroon’s ten regions: the Far North, Centre, and West.

Professor Momo Solefack Marie Caroline from the University of Dschang told FairPlanet, this could hinder its impact. “Expanding to other regions is essential to unlock its full restoration potential,” she said, warning that rural communities without digital access risk being left behind.

However, not everyone sees digital access as a barrier. Dr. Ebenezar Asaah, a Cameroonian tree scientist and President of the Asaah Fonyam & Angwi Foundation, argues that MyFarmTrees is far from exclusionary.

“There is hardly a household today without a digital phone,” he told FairPlanet. “Most farmers today are literate and own smart devices. MyFarmTrees is a revolution that will benefit them.”

Asaah points out that many farmers already use digital tools for price intelligence through market information systems, and believes the platform will evolve to reflect users’ realities: “It will become a highly adaptable and dependable tool for future farmers.”

The broader challenge, he says, lies in matching local tree names to their scientific counterparts. “That’s not easy, but if we manage it, the potential for knowledge-sharing is huge. It means farmers could use their languages to identify and integrate the right trees into their farming systems.”

Cameroon has experienced substantial deforestation and land degradation in recent years, with causes ranging from fuel wood and charcoal extraction to infrastructure development. This has negatively impacted local livelihoods, the national economy, and ecosystem services. The central African nation has pledged to restore 12 million hectares of degraded lands under the Bonn Challenge and the African Forest Restoration Initiative, AFR 100. 

In conversation with FairPlanet, Angèle Wadou, sub-director of Biodiversity and Biosecurity at the Cameroon Ministry of the Environment, Nature Protection and Sustainable Development, said the country embraced the MyFarmTrees technology to boost its climate change fight. “This initiative adds to many other restoration initiatives we have in Cameroon today,” she said. “Cameroon is doing everything possible to restore its 12 million pieces of degraded land through state resources and partnerships. Restoration initiatives like these help greatly in climate change mitigation and adaptation.”

Farmer testimonies

In western Cameroon’s Bangou district - one of the pilot sites for the MyFarmTrees project - around 9,000 trees have been replanted. Home to some 50,000 people, the area faces mounting challenges from water scarcity and soil erosion, driven by erratic seasonal patterns and widespread deforestation. “This initiative brings both new vegetation cover and economic opportunity,” Paul Sikapin, Mayor of Bangou, told FairPlanet. “With our hilly terrain, the soil gives way easily during rains. Deforestation, worsened by wildfires, has made things worse.”

The project also aims to restore 315 sacred forests across the country. One such forest, in the Tomghem Bayangam chiefdom, is nearing collapse. During a FairPlanet visit in late May 2025, tree saplings assigned QR codes for geolocation were thriving. Local farmers photograph the saplings and upload the data to the platform for monitoring.

“Thanks to this initiative, we are on the path to reviving our sacred forest,” said Joseph Kom, the forest’s guardian. “These trees will one day offer shade and bear fruit. Our current survival rate is about 40 per cent. But if the forest disappears, so does our village.”

Tagne Waffo Kouoptchop II, the third-class traditional ruler of the Tomghem Bayangam chiefdom, calls the sacred forest a “temple” of ancestral blessings. He attributes its decline to wildfires, expanding farmland, and poverty.

“Many sacred forests in this region have already vanished,” he told FairPlanet, as the hum of distant chainsaws echoed through the bush. “We’re grateful our forest is now being restored as a true forest. Our ancestors once gathered healing herbs from here.”

The app helps farmers choose native tree species that best match local conditions while meeting community needs, such as trees that provide fodder, fruit, or future timber value.

In Bangou, Marie-Rose Wandji, a mother of eight, has replanted mango, pear, orange, and plum trees on her deforested land. “These fruit trees will help me fight poverty,” she said. “We used to be surrounded by trees. Now we’re struggling to bring them back.”

She’s not alone. Yewouo Jean Réné, 57, has planted hundreds of fruit trees donated through the initiative. “Once they grow, they’ll help reduce the heat here,” he said.

In Cameroon’s southern region, part of the Congo Basin, the platform is also used to monitor communal forest loss. With nearly 20 per cent of Nkolefulan’s 48,400-hectare forest already exploited, local guardians now rely on MyFarmTrees to source and track new native seedlings.

“Almost all exploited areas are now being reforested,” said forest guardian Owandza Ebode Bienvenu. “The app helps us ensure better traceability as the trees grow.”

Dealing with existential challenges

Schools are not left out in this digital restoration drive. Hundreds of trees have been planted in the Nkoemvone primary school in Cameroon's South region. During the dry season, pupils water the plants every two days during school.

“Until now, children were obliged to walk miles into the forest just to see certain plant species such as bubinga [African rosewood]. But now, they have it under their nose,” Elvis Mekoulou Ntyam, deputy director of the school, told FairPlanet. “The trees will help improve our ecosystem while transferring theoretical knowledge into practice,” he added.

Despite its potential, the MyFarmTrees restoration initiative faces existential challenges, such as the case of some farmers who can't afford a smartphone or use one. To address this problem, the initiative has provided training to local youth farmer stewards and technicians to assist farmers with onboarding and use, registration and monitoring.

Kettle explained that the apps have been designed and developed through integration of feedback iterations from local communities to the development team, in a user-centred approach, with different levels of complexity depending on the user role. 

The app offers an offline functionality to address potential connectivity problems - data can be collected offline and uploaded later once the phone is connected to an internet network again. 

“We’re committed to inclusion - technology should serve the farmer, and We pay attention to continue to become a gender-responsive framework to align with GEDSI aspects and integrate women and youth in the access, benefitting and resulting impact from using the platform,” Kettle explained.

Professor Solefack pointed out that the app requires capacity building to address the implementation and maintenance costs.

“Monitoring is mandatory for both stakeholders (project developer and beneficiaries) at two levels: digital monitoring and field workers,” Solefack said. Though stressing the importance of data collection for the success of reforesting Cameroon’s forests, Solefack warns that data concerns related to the MyFarmTrees blockchain application are justified if personal data is not protected and used transparently and responsibly.

Dr Asaah, the tree scientist, brushed aside speculations that digital surveillance via the MyFarmTrees blockchain application could lead to over-surveillance or data concerns. “Overall, I will say the digital app is a major revolution which could go places if scaled up,” he said.

“Just imagine having an app with a whole list of species which could be used for restoration within the highlands of Cameroon,” he said. “It is work that should be encouraged and promoted.”

Image by Nalova Akua.