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- In southeastern Cameroon, the Indigenous Baka people are helping protecting their forests with the Sapelli app.
- They spearheaded the design of this tool as part of a 2021 project launched in six villages around Lobéké National Park.
- The app allows the Baka to map nontimber forest products (NTFPs), flag human-wildlife conflict, and combat poaching.
- According to a recent report co-authored by WWF and the park’s conservation service, no elephants, gorillas or chimpanzees were killed in this protected area between 2022 and 2024, thanks to the park management’s adoption of technology.
SALAPOUMBÉ, Cameroon — Freddy Mbengue, a 24-year-old farmer in a black polo shirt and denim shorts, keeps a watchful eye on the forest. Mbengue is from the Baka community in Yenga-Tengué village in southeastern Cameroon, near Lobéké National Park. He’s trying to identify fruit trees, or species used for their medicinal properties. He has a black smartphone and a machete for clearing a grassy path, which he hasn’t used since the rains returned last April.
Mbengue uses the Sapelli app on his phone to identify forest resources essential for his community’s well-being. He used it on the morning of Saturday, June 7, to map a wild mango tree in a forest close to the village. The wild mango, whose pit is also used as a spice by the Baka, is one of the nontimber forest products (NTFPs) he regularly maps on his smartphone during his forest hikes.
“When I find fruit trees, honey, medicinal trees, elephant or gorilla tracks, or poachers’ camps in the forest, I open the app, click on the image, film a video, and send it to the park to report what I saw. Afterwards, they go on site to confirm. This allows us to monitor our forests and transfer information to the park staff,” he says.
The Baka, co-designers of the Sapelli app
This technology helps improve Baka access to the forest by mapping important resources for their well-being: fruit trees, honey, wild yams, fishing and hunting sites, medicinal plants. It’s also used to report wildlife poaching, document cases of violence and abuse, and record where animals are eating and damaging villagers’ crops (human-wildlife conflict).
The Sapelli app was introduced to Baka communities in 2021, as part of a project by the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group at University College London, U.K., funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and WWF. It features icons representing situations of human-wildlife conflict, the location of forest resources, violence and poaching, which users often encounter in the forest. These icons (fruit tree, gorilla, poacher, elephant in a field, etc.), mainly drawn by the Baka, help break down literacy barriers by including those who can’t read or write.
British anthropologist Simon Hoyte, who studies the Baka of Cameroon, published an article in 2021 on the ExCiteS blog about this forest people and the Sapelli app. “I found that if the icons are designed directly by each community, not only does the software have much more meaning, but community members also feel a sense of ownership over the technology,” he wrote. “This ‘co-design’ process carried out at the local level is an important part of the attempt to decolonise research.”
Technology harnessed to improve biodiversity
Since the Sapelli app was introduced to the Baka in 2021, 24 people have been trained to use it in six villages around Lobéké National Park. The data they collect are sent to the park’s conservation department, for a nominal fee of 50 CFA francs (about 8 U.S. cents) per piece of data collected.
According to Delphin Djadja Dama, a consultant and community facilitator at WWF Cameroon, “This app has become a key part of conservation in the villages.” He adds that “through Sapelli technology, the Baka contribute to the participatory management of the park. Since the conservation service cannot be everywhere at once, we need to involve communities in park management.”
The information provided by the Sapelli app has enabled better development of the management and protection policy for this protected area, which spans 217,854 hectares (538,328 acres), or about one and a half times the size of London.
Djadja says the app has made it possible to map areas of high tension between humans and elephants in the villages surrounding the park, helping inform the concerted actions being taken to curb these instances of human-wildlife conflict. It has especially contributed to the fight against poaching of the park’s large mammals, he adds.
A recent report co-authored by WWF and the park’s conservation service indicates no elephants, gorillas or chimpanzees were killed in this protected area between 2022 and 2024. This has been attributed to the park management’s adoption of technology, including tools such as Sapelli, SMART and EarthRanger, as well as the increase in patrols by foot, river and vehicle inside and around the park.
“We use drones and deploy field teams who use SMART” — Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool, a software suite used by rangers — “which allows them to communicate with the command center that we have set up,” park custodian Donatien Joseph Guy Biloa told Mongabay. “We are also implementing EarthRanger, which allows us to see teams’ progress on the ground in real time.”
The Baka, represented by the Sanguia Baka Buma’a Kpodé (ASBABUK) association, and the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife (MINFOF), are also bound by a memorandum of understanding signed in 2019 and renewed in 2023 for a period of three years. This partnership aims to facilitate Indigenous communities’ access to Lobéké, Boumba-Bek and Nki national parks in eastern Cameroon for the collection of essential forest resources, hunting using artisanal tools (spears, wire traps, etc.), and fishing. In return, they must denounce acts of poaching and contribute to the protection of park biodiversity.
Banner image: The Sapelli app uses intuitive icons designed with the Baka community. Image by Yannick Kenné/Mongabay.
This story was first published here in French on June 19, 2025.
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