“The next time you hear your favorite song, consider this: there’s a good chance that parts of the guitar or piano in that song were made from an ebony tree sourced from a community forest in Cameroon. The country’s iconic ebony is a traditionally-used resource valued by musical instrument makers around the world”. This is what World Bank published on its website in January 2018.Saying Taylor Guitars, one of the leading guitar manufacturers values Cameroon’s ebony wood is not an understatement.

However  the guitar maker noticed that this wood along the rich biodiversity faces a long-term threat so, it partnered with the Congo Basin Institute to launch a project to help local communities develop and plant different varieties of ebony to boost Cameroon’s ebony stocks.

Moreover, Cameroon’s government joined Taylor Guitars to reflect on ways to scale the project to a national level as part of efforts to reduce forest degradation (REDD+).

Let’s note that in the framework of its project, Taylor Guitars provides seedlings, infrastructure, and training for the planting of ebony, along with fruit and medicinal trees.

S.A