Women scatter seeds, restore forests in Guinea, the ‘water tower of West Africa’

Women scatter seeds, restore forests in Guinea, the ‘water tower of West Africa’

For Mariame Condé, the seed-collecting work came at a critical time. In January 2022, she was pregnant and nearly out of food. Her husband had left their village to search for gold in Sigiri, a mining area, and their harvest was almost gone, she told Mongabay in a WhatsApp message. That year, Condé collected 20,000 Carapa procera tree seeds from around her hometown in Kofilakoro, Guinea. “The project paid me 1,000,000 GNF [about $115] which was …