The 10th Anniversary of the African Forest Forum (AFF) was celebrated on 22 May 2019, at the Amani Gardens, Karura Forest Service grounds in Nairobi Kenya. The celebration of this important anniversary presented an opportunity for AFF’s founding members, members forum, secretariat, Governing Council and partners involved in its evolution to reflect on the achievements to date as well as to take stock of the challenges with which it is confronted. The focus of AFF was directed towards forestry and related issues that cut across countries and different African sub-regions with the aim to further improve the public image and awareness of the institution, which, a decade later, is more relevant than ever. Specific objectives were to:

• Celebrate 10 years of hard work by founding members, staff, members forum and partners of the African Forest Forum (AFF);
• Recognize role past generosity of major donors had played in laying basis for current success;
• Highlight AFF’s programmatic approach and plans for the future to secure further institutional and financial support;
• Increase the number of AFF members with a commitment to the sustainable management, wise use and conservation of Africa’s forest and tree resources;
• Seek press coverage to raise the profile of forestry, highlight threats to forest resources and the environment, and champion better management of African forests.

The sustainable business model (SBM) concept requires enterprises to integrate sustainability aspects in their planning and operations. Although 60% of the global working population make their living in the informal sector mostly in low-and middle income countries, the potential for SBMs has rarely been analyzed for this category. This study explores the SBMs of informal charcoal-producing enterprises in coastal Kenya. It describes key business-model components: value proposition, value creation and delivery, and economic value capture. Impact and dependency on sustainability-related indicators were also studied. Data were obtained through individual interviews, focus-group discussions, and workshops for charcoal producers and other relevant stakeholders. Findings demonstrated that charcoal enterprises, despite their informal status, adopt elaborate business models. The incomes positively affect several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by reducing, if not eradicating, poverty and supporting basic livelihood needs. Examples of negative impacts on some SDG include the activity’s contribution to forest degradation. Feedback impacts, where SDG status influence the informal enterprises’ opportunities were also identified. The SBM model contributes to the development of a balanced sustainability transition of the charcoal sector. We suggest further analyses of the role of informal enterprises in the bioenergy sector for sustainable development and how their SBMs could be improved.

The African Forest Forum (AFF) has undertaken studies in four African sub-regions to assess the potential of selected African countries to produce and use of liquid biofuels as a strategy for developing green and circular economies. The sub regions are eastern, southern, central and western Africa. This report is on three eastern Africa countries namely of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania. Then the outputs of this study are expected to facilitate planning the growth and development of local and national liquid biofuel sector based on information and data obtained from field and factory visits, interviews and discussions with some national government and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), and other stakeholders related to the liquid biofuel industry. Liquid biofuels commonly available in eastern Africa are bioethanol and biodiesel produced from higher plants, though there was ongoing research on liquid biofuel from microalgae. In Ethiopia, land highly suitable for production of feedstock was estimated that 7.2 million ha (6.3%) for jatropha, 7.68 million ha (6.8%) for croton, 11.47 million ha (10.2%) for cassava, 40.91 million ha (36.2%) for sweet sorghum, and 0.7 million ha (0.62%) for sugarcane. In Kenya, 17.4 million ha (30.6%) land area was suitable for sweet sorghum, 6.39 million ha (11.2%) for cassava, 1.26 million ha (2.2%) for sugarcane, and 14.9 million ha (26.2%) for jatropha. In Tanzania, the suitable land area is 22.79million ha (22.9%) for cassava, 18.96million ha (21.5%) for sugarcane, 31.51million ha (35.8%) for sweet sorghum, and 17.78million ha (20.2%) for sunflower. Investments in liquid biofuel production in the years 2010s were not profitable, resulting in investors abandoning investments on feedstocks like jatropha and related biodieselcrops. The only investment that remained was the already well-known sugarcane production mainly for sugar and molasses bioethanol. The use of sugarcane for the production of biofuels has been observed in13 sugar factories in Ethiopia, 16 sugar factories in Kenya, and five sugar factories in Tanzania. The reported annual production of ethanol was 24.25 million liters in Ethiopia, 8.25 million in Kenya and 1.4 million in Tanzania from one or two sugar factories. Improving productivity of sugarcane by increasing the yield to 138 tons or more per hectare, combined with improvement in technology by reducing wastage in molasses, and ethanol production, could enable the existing Ethiopian sugarcane factories to produce in full capacity at 432.41 million liters of ethanol per year, and those in the Kenyan at 289.28 million liters/year and the ones in Tanzanian at 81.64 million liters/year, when operating on an average of 250 working days/year. The production costs for conventional liquid biofuels are mainly the feedstock costs that account for 60-90% of the total production cost. This has given rise to the use of cheap sources such as lignocellulosic biomass waste, agricultural residues, and sugarcane bagasse. These were reported to vary annually from about 2.2 million tons of agricultural residues in Kenya, to 19.7 million tons in Ethiopia, in addition to 24.2 million tons of woody biomass residues in Kenya to 105.2 million tons in Ethiopia that could be used for lignocellulosic bioethanol production. From lignocellulosic biomass processing, the total bioethanol production could reach 8.2 billion liters/year in Kenya, 10.8 billion liters in Tanzania to 35.7 billion liters/year in Ethiopia, which is higher than their imports of petroleum. Bio-oil (pyrolysis oil) is another liquid biofuel that can be obtained by burning biomass at 400 to 1000°C under limited oxygen environment. Pyrolysis oil producing biomass includes eucalyptus species, in addition to other biomass resources. Microalgae oil is identified as a potential biodiesel feedstock in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania as these tropical countries have favorable climatic conditions. Microalgae are promising liquid biofuel feedstock due to its rapid growth rate and many times harvest, and without taking up land under food crops or forests. Microalgae can produce 11,238litres biodiesel per hectar per year, which is higher than the 150litres biodiesel from a hectare of jatropha and higher than the 700 liters of ethanol in a hectare of sugarcane. The use of ethanol for cooking at household level reduces emission that can be created by solid biomass fuel including 99.8% of particulate matter created by burning solid biomass in three stone stoves and 91.0% of that created by wood/charcoal Rocket Combo stoves. Improving the E15 in Ethiopia could have an abatement potential of 0.2 Mt CO2e in 2030. In Kenya, adoption of low carbon using biodiesel has an abatement potential of 1.2 MtCO2e. Tanzania has a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions economy-wide between 138 - 153 MtCO2e by 2030 by promoting clean technologies. The eastern Africa national governments ambitious plans to produce liquid biofuel had minimal achievements because of institutional, market, technical and legal challenges. Many of these can be overcome by providing comprehensive support for out growers, supporting seed production and diversifying feedstock, in addition to providing training and financial incentive, as well as researching different types of feedstocks that have high yield. There are also needs to improve water use efficiency in production and providing supportive/enabling policies. Also, the liquid biofuel investment in eastern Africa had adversely affected crop land in many places because it was not based on pre-assessment of land-use. Much as there was and continues to exist good potential domestic and foreign markets for liquid biofuel, the failure on the initial biofuel production investment resulted in idleness of land that was allocated to production of feedstock and supporting infrastructure, mistrust between local people who lost land and the investors, and loss of labor. That notwithstanding, given the new impetus on renewable energy, forestry and agricultural professionals should aggressively continue researching on appropriate and productive bioenergy crops.

This compendium addresses the subject on the basic science of climate change: climate modelling and scenario development for professional training on forestry and related sectors in Africa. Climate plays an important role in the socio-economic dynamics of nations, which is especially true in Africa. Climate information is crucial for a nation’s socioeconomic development and planning for the future. This necessitates climate modelling, prediction and projection. This compendium is therefore a useful tool for learning about the principles involved in predicting and projecting the climate of the future. The compendium comprises four chapters. The first chapter addresses concepts and principles of climate modelling. The second addresses aspects on modelling the climate system. Chapter three addresses climate scenario development. The final chapter is about the application of climate change modelling in forestry and related sectors.

This issue provides a broad overview of some of the most pressing concerns in the forestry sector, with the intention that subsequent issues of this publication will dwell on other equally important concerns that could not be accommodated in this issue. AFF plans to produce, with potential partners, such issues once every 2-4 years, resources permitting. The first chapter explores ways through which SFM can be facilitated to grow on the continent. The actual state of forest resources on the continent is an area that FAO has covered well in its regular publications on the same, so this report does not delve into this. Chapter 2 then looks at how the continent can increase the supply of industrial round wood outside its natural forests by examining the current state, management and supply of germ plasm or planting stock. Following investments in forest and tree establishment in various landscapes is the necessity to protect such investments from pests and diseases, among other vagaries. That is the subject of Chapter 3 that examines the current state, management and control of pests and diseases that afflict forests and tree resources on the continent. Climate change is increasingly bringing another dimension in managing forests and trees outside forests in the sense that a new commercial product, forest carbon, has been introduced to the forestry sector. In addition, climate change is affecting these resources while at the same time these resources affect climate change. This is the focus of Chapter 4. Biofuel development and use on the continent is growing, and this is in tandem with global efforts to develop clean energy through renewable resources. These and other issues are explored in Chapter 5.

Kenya has a total surface area of 582 646 km², and a population total of just over 40 million with a growth rate of 2.7% (2009 census). The total state forest area is estimated at 2.35 million ha (about 2.7% of Kenya's land area) out of which 1.57 million ha are gazetted and 0.78 million ha ungazetted forests. In addition, there is approximately 2.1 million ha of other woodlands, 24.8 million ha of bush land and 10.7 million ha of wooded grassland. The number and volume of trees on farm are considerable in Kenya, particularly on small- and medium size farms in the highlands, but it is impossible to translate these tree resources into an area equivalent figure.