An ancient African tree is providing a new 'superfood' yet local harvesters are barely surviving

Since childhood, Loveness Bhitoni has collected fruit from the gigantic baobab trees surrounding her homestead in Zimbabwe to add variety to the family’s staple corn and millet diet. The 50-year-old Bhitoni never saw them as a source of cash, until now.

Climate change-induced droughts have decimated her crops. Meanwhile, the world has a growing appetite for the fruit of the drought-resistant baobab as a natural health food.

Bhitoni wakes before dawn to go foraging for baobab fruit, walking barefoot though hot, thorny landscapes with the risk of wildlife attacks. She gathers sacks of the hard-shelled fruit from the ancient trees and sells them on to industrial food processors or individual buyers from the city.

The baobab trade, which took root in her area in 2018, would previously supplement things like children's school fees and clothing for locals of the small town of Kotwa in northeastern Zimbabwe. Now, it's a matter of survival following the latest devastating drought in southern Africa worsened by the El Niño weather phenomenon.

“We are only able to buy corn and salt," Bhitoni said after a long day’s harvest. "Cooking oil is a luxury, because the money is simply not enough. Sometimes I spend a month without buying a bar of soap. I can’t even talk of school fees or children’s clothes."

The global market for baobab products has spiked, turning rural African areas with an abundance of the trees into source markets. The trees, known for surviving even under severe conditions like drought or fire, need more than 20 years to start producing fruit and aren't cultivated but foraged.

Tens of thousands of rural people like Bhitoni have emerged to feed the need. The African Baobab Alliance, with members across the continent’s baobab producing countries, projects that more...