Abstract

South African forests provide a variety of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) ranging from building materials to food and medicinal products. Economically speaking, the NTFPs sustain the rural and periurban poor in meeting their subsistence needs; about 85% of households in rural South Africa use NTFPs in their daily lives. The shortage of NTFPs is bound to intensify the impacts on rural poor. It is to be noted that continual under-reporting of NTFPs from forests and woodlands has resulted into lesser importance being attached to them in the national accounting; consequently their role in supporting livelihoods and food security is also undermined at the policy formation stage. NTFPs can play a bigger role in South Africa by mitigating the effects of hunger and malnutrition and engendering rural development. The study highlights challenges that South Africa faces to develop the NTFP sector to leverage the rural development objective and suggests a policy framework which can attain it.