How the devil's claw tuber improves health and wildlife conservation in Namibia

The long dry season is ending in Namibia's Bwabwata National Park. Teon Rongwani, who belongs to the Khwe Indigenous Peoples and is the community representative of the Kyaramacan Association, wipes the sweat from his brow and takes a last look over the sandy clearing where he and his community have spent the past months harvesting a fleshy tuber whose jagged seed pod has earned the name, the "devil's claw."

Teon and his fellow community members camped for weeks to collect it. The baskets are now full of tubers, and all the large holes dug to retrieve them have been filled to help the plant grow back from the mother tuber and prevent animals from injuring themselves.

For Teon, and between 5 000 and 10 000 harvesters across Namibia, this marks the close of another year of hard work under the hot sun searching for Harpagophytum procumbens and Harpagophytum zeyheri, the scientific names of these devil's claw species.

Found in arid, savanna environments in southern Africa, devil's claw is hidden deep in the soil.  It is not only difficult to find but also needs to be carefully harvested. "You need to walk miles and miles in search of devil's claw," Teon says.

His community, however, comes together to do it collectively and sustainably.

Devil's claw is recognised for its anti-inflammatory properties and is used to reduce joint pain and to improve digestion. Locally, this natural remedy is drunk as tea. Namibia supplies around 90 percent of the global market, exporting mainly to Europe, with Germany as a leading buyer.

For Teon's family, like many rural families, devil's claw is one of their main sources of income: money that pays for school fees and uniforms, food and health care.

"Devil's claw, it's a most important product for the Khwe. The Khwe have been using it since our ancestors," Teon explains, but now, its increasing commercial value ensures him and his community a higher income and a better future.

"It's a miracle plant indeed," he says.

However, devil's claw is a protected species. Overharvesting and illegal trade threaten the plant, the harvesters and wildlife that share its environment. Sustainable management of this scarce resource is crucial.

Led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and funded by the European Union (EU) and the French Development Agency, the Sustainable Wildlife Management (SWM) Programme in Namibia has been working with World Wildlife Fund Namibia, the Kyaramacan Association and neighboring communal conservancies — George Mukoya and Muduva Nyangana — to ensure that devil's claw harvesting remains both legal and sustainable.

"Before the harvesters go into the field, they need to undergo a training. After registration, they are issued with a permit and can go into the field to start harvesting," explains Teon.

Alongside this, the FAO-led Dryland Sustainable Landscapes Impact Program (DSL-IP) — funded by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the Namibian government —provides training to communities on Good Agricultural and Collection Practices (GACP+) to help them turn devil's claw into a sustainable income stream.

This includes ensuring that the harvesters record what they collect, re-cover the soil after digging and leave the mother root of the plant to regenerate.

"Harvesting is actually a tough job," Teon says.

"The number one rule, the unbreakable rule, no matter what, is you should never touch the mother root because then you're destroying the whole plant," says Justina Hamwaanyena, Certification Manager at a company that buys devil's claw tubers directly from the harvesters to produce sustainable-certified Fair for Life and Fair Wild devil's claw tablets and powders.

The SWM Programme and DSL-IP support also includes devil's claw resource surveys, sustainable quota setting, helping ensure fair buyer contracts, and reducing cross-border illegal harvesting.

"What the Kyaramacan Association is trying to achieve at the end of the day is to make sure that the benefits to the members are equitably shared and that the natural resources are sustainable," says Teon.

In addition, a management fee or commission on devil's claw harvesting helps fund the operational costs of communal conservancies, which in turn support wildlife protection.

"People only see devil's claw as just devil's claw, but there is a story to it," explains Justina. The tuber's journey from Namibia's drylands to the shelves of pharmacies connects remote Indigenous Peoples' communities to the global herbal medicine market.

Through initiatives like the SWM Programme, which is now working in 16 countries with a consortium of partners including the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), FAO is investing in sustainable value chains to transform livelihoods while conserving biodiversity, ensuring that nature's gifts, like the devil's claw, can flourish for generations to come and ensure the continuation of Indigenous Peoples food and knowledge systems.

The story and photos can be found here: https://www.fao.org/newsroom/story/from-savannah-plant-to-global-remedy/en