WCF organise 3-day transboundary visit to Guinea

From 4-6 May 2023, an exchange field visit was organised by the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation (WCF) in Guinea to enable experience and knowledge-sharing between Guinea and Sierra Leone. The visit aimed to build the capacity of actors working in both landscapes to transfer skills for successful programme implementation.
The exchange visit was arranged to support of the process of creating the future Pinselli Soyah Sabouyah National Park (PSS) and to increase participatory management of the Outamba-Kilimi-Kuru Hills-Pinselli-Soyah transboundary landscape (OKKPS) between Guinea and Sierra Leone.
One hundred and fifty-seven (157) people from Guinea and Sierra Leone took part in the activity (including 96 women), 133 of them members of market gardening, beekeeping and agricultural cooperatives, and 19 of them staff of WCF and Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary (TCS).

The participants visited four sites: the Gadha Pinselli Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) field; the market gardening sites of Kouloundala, Balancia and Megnekouré; the FMNR field of Gadha Pinselli; and the beekeeping site of Soyah. During the visits, they discussed the technical and agroecological issues involved in market gardening, FMNR fields, the ecological production of honey, and the efficient functioning of the groups.
The participants learned about the technique of processing Néré grains into Soumbara and followed this with a practical workshop to process 100 kg of Néré grains.
The knowledge acquired during these exchanges and visits to Guinea will serve as a model to be replicated around Outamba-Kilimi National Park (OKNP) in Sierra Leone. At the end of the visit, participants expressed their desire to multiply and strengthen the collaboration and participatory management of transboundary natural resources in the OKKPS landscape."