About us

1.1 Our Mission

Mission, Values and Strategies

Our mission is to protect nature and improve community livelihood in partnership with local communities in ways which support the

  • Conservation of birds, threatened and endangered mammals, forests, associated biodiversity and indigenous knowledge about the wise and sustainable use of plants, soils, water and other natural resources.
  • Advocacy and promotion of public awareness of both local and global environmental and socio-economic issues created by human pressure and the potentials of community joint action to rehabilitate degraded land generate livelihood benefits and combat climate change.
  • Building of the capacity of local communities to increase their resilience to environmental degradation and climate shocks through supporting the establishment of community-led natural resource management strategies.
  • Improvement of livelihoods in rural communities through the promotion of apiculture, agro forestry, livestock rearing sustainable use of forests and forest products, for traditional foods and medicines to improve food security, nutrition, and health.

All of our work is guided and informed by distinctive values:

Partnership: MfoFou seeks to develop respectful, equitable and sustainable partnerships with organizations that share their vision and mission.

Transparency: MfoFou is open about its finances and is bound to publish annually financial reports

Ethics: MfoFou is open to working with everyone that shares her mission and vision irrespective of race, sex, believes, and/or age complying with international guidance on child labor.

Learning and sharing: MfoFou seeks to maximize and promote opportunities to share their experiences and learn from both each other and good practice from other initiatives – through our website, e-newsletter and where possible, participatory workshops.

Our strategic aims which are delivered through our six programs with local partners in Cameroon include:

  • Education:Foster an understanding of the amenity, ecological and economic value of nature.
  • Livelihoods:Enable communities to develop and restore sustainable and productive landscapes through tree cultivation.
  • Research:We endeavor to base our conservatory efforts to our field based research and collaboration with other research institutions through promoting data sharing.
  • Capacity Building:Build capacity in community organizations to advocate, share knowledge and implement community based forestry and agroforestry.

1.2 History

The Mfombo Foundation (MfoFou) was founded in 2003 by Didacus Mfombo as a community based organization (CBO) to promote tree planting activities around water catchments in the Bamendankwe hill. After planting tree in 2003, Mfombo realized that the trees planted needed to be taken care off. Furthermore, field survey indicated how rich the already fragmented forests of the Bamenda highland forest were. For example, Birdlife International and academic researchers highlighted the presence of endemic plants, insects, birds and other wildlife in the landscape. With the understanding of how small populations of endemic wildlife species such as the Bannerman’s turaco were continuously at risk of extinction due to hunting and habitat disturbance, Mfombo upgraded the CBO into a NGO in 2010. MfoFou was later registered as a public charity with 501 (c) (3) Status in the United States of America. MfoFou’s mission is to make communities take care of nature so that nature can in return take care of them.

1.3 Meet Our Team

Didacus M. Tamambang
Founder/Executive Director
Didacus is a natural resource management professional with over 10 year experience in agro forestry, community development, wildlife management, project design and management. Didacus has a MSc. in Sustainable Forest and Natural Resource Management from the universities of Copenhagen, Denmark and Goettingen, Germany. He also has a diploma in project management from the Pan African Institute for Development, Buea. Additional skills he possesses include: data analysis, GIS, R, and fund raising. He also has experience working with local communities in Africa.