Guinea: Women Scatter Seeds, Restore Forests in Guinea, the ‘Water Tower of West Africa’

Dec 16, 2025 | Liz Kimbrough
Mongabay Features
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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 Siguiri, 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 a relief,” she said. “I used the money from arboRise to buy food and clothes for my son.”

Since 2021, the arboRise Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit, along with a local partner  Guinea Local Development and Environment (GUIDRE), has reforested nearly 4,400 hectares (about 10,900 acres) across 43 villages in Guinea — an area about one-fourth the size of Washington, D.C.