Anyone who has ever seen a living baobab tree should find it hard to forget. Alongside the ubiquitous acacia – the thorny umbrella tree – baobabs are statuesque icons of Africa’s drier landscapes.
The trees have influenced, anchored and fed communities for tens of thousands of years, influencing culture and traditions, inspiring art and folklore. This week, freelance reporter Emmet Livingstone’s dispatch for us from the Democratic Republic of Congo, ironically also the home of the world’s largest tropical forest, really struck a chord with me and with many readers.
That, in the DRC’s vast megacity capital Kinshasa, the last city centre baobab tree is facing the very real threat of being cut down to make way for more development seemed an overwhelmingly depressing moment.
Baobab trees have climate resilience written into their DNA. The trees are giant water tanks: over 75% of their bulk is stored water. For centuries people have cut hollows in the trees or used existing depressions to make drought-proof water stores. When other crops have dried up, the baobab’s pulpy fruits and leaves are protein-rich, while the bark produces a usable fibre. Mighty baobab trees are more than a traditional meeting place for a community: they can mean survival through tough seasons.
Just as the reliance on charcoal for cooking fires among the poor and displaced has led to so much deforestation in rural DRC and beyond, rapid planned and unplanned urban sprawl is causing huge environmental and cultural degredation to central Africa’s great cities.
The baobab tree in particular stands as a sign of resilience to the climate emergency and the adjacent food and water security crises.
I’m desperately hoping good sense will prevail in Kinshasa and the activists will save their tree. Casual disrespect for, or wilful destruction of, a species that has been here on the planet longer than us is such a bleak signal of where we are – namely at our most arrogant, most shortsighted.
Spotlight
What drove gen Z protests that brought down governments and called out corruption? We spoke to protesters in Togo, Kenya, Nepal, Madagascar and Morocco about how their actions helped shape the world in 2025
Top picks
US ‘adapt, shrink or die’ terms for $2bn aid pot will mean UN bowing down to Washington, say experts
Packing a punch: the true story behind the first Zimbabwean film to qualify for Oscars
From childhood staple to luxury food: how Nigeria’s jollof became too expensive to eat
Rights and freedom
Three children dead in Iran protests as security forces accused of ‘indiscriminate targeting’
Childbirth under attack: how women and babies became targets in conflicts around the world
Opinion and analysis
Southern frontlines
Global health
Read this: Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State by Mahmood Mamdani
This is a first-hand account of Mamdani’s country’s struggle to find its feet after decolonisation and independence. An insightful political commentator and philosopher – and father to New York’s mayor – the Ugandan academic brings a learned eye to the complexity of east African politics. For more of the best recent African and black diaspora writing read the full article here.
