Table 4.

The diversity of species of wild foods used in selected countries of Africa.

country	summarized area characteristics	number of species	references
Africa	continent-wide estimate (insects only)	600	DeFoliart (1992)
Africa	sub-Saharan Africa (insects only)	250	van Huis (2003)
Africa	Central and West Africa (plants only)	1500	Chege (1994)
Botswana	Tyua grow crops and use wild plants, animals, birds, fish and insects	171	Hitchcock (1999)
Congo	Mbuti Pygmies of forest: cultivators of cassava and plantain plus users of 230 animal and 100 plant species	330	Ishikawa (1999)
Ethiopia	subsistence agriculture, animal husbandry, semi-arid to humid	44	Fentahun & Hager (2009)
Ethiopia	country-wide estimate	203	Asfaw & Tadesse (2001)
Ethiopia	country-wide estimate	300	Asfaw (2009)
Ethiopia	agricultural, arid, open woodland (50% of plants in region edible)	25	Becker (1983)
Ethiopia	humid to semi-arid; forest to savannah, three ethnic groups in south Ethiopia	66	Balemie & Kebebew (2006)
Kenya	country-wide estimate for agricultural communities (plants only)	800	Maundu (1996)
Kenya	Turkana agro-pastoralists and rural fishing communities, arid and semi-arid	14	Levine & Crosskey (2006)
Madagascar	forest-dwelling, swidden cultivation in tropical forest	150	Styger et al. (1999)
Namibia	agriculture and livestock; tropical wetland, swamp and woodland in Caprivi	21	Mulonga (2003)
Nigeria	agricultural, savanna, semi-arid	121	Harris & Mohammed (2003)
Tanzania	agricultural, tropical forest, East Usambara mountains	28	Kessey (1998)
Tanzania	agricultural, tropical forest, East Usambara mountains	46	Hårkönen & Vainio-Mattila (1998)
Tanzania	Batemi agropastoralists, semi-arid (with 35 wild species cultivated)	44	Johns et al. (1996)
Uganda	agricultural households in southwest Uganda (some wild species cultivated and gathered from the wild)	94	Musinguzi et al. (2006)
Zambia	country-wide estimate	15–25	Pegler & Piearce (1980)