- Aloyce Mwakisoma, a renowned plant expert from Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains, was struck and killed by a bus on Oct. 6 near the village of Sanje.
- Mwakisoma, who was born and raised in the Udzungwas, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the plants and animals found in his home in the Eastern Arc.
- His colleagues recognized him as one of the many local experts whose indigenous knowledge powerfully informs the description and protection of the continent’s biodiversity.
Tanzanian conservationists are mourning the tragic death of renowned plant expert Aloyce Mwakisoma, who played a critical role in forest restoration and recently helped identify and describe a giant new species of rainforest tree.
Mwakisoma, 45, was struck and killed by a bus on Oct. 6 near the village of Sanje, in Tanzania’s Udzungwa Mountains. It was on the same day he had visited family members to share news about his imminent church wedding to longtime partner Salma Jabili.
Mwakisoma was born and raised in the Kilombero Valley, near the Udzungwa Mountains, an isolated massif in eastern Tanzania that’s part of a chain known as the Eastern Arc. As the son of a hunter, Mwakisoma acquired a profound knowledge of the region’s plants and animals.
When hunting was formally outlawed, following the establishment of Udzungwa Mountains National Park in 1992, Mwakisoma’s father, Langsom, became a research assistant, working with scientists studying the massif’s treasure trove of biodiversity. As a young boy, Mwakisoma would accompany his father and the researchers.
He later became a research assistant himself. During one notable early assignment 15 years ago, Mwakisoma was tasked with following a troop of Udzungwa red colobus monkeys (Piliocolobus gordonorum) on a daily basis. One afternoon, during the hottest time of the day, both he and the troop were napping on the floor of Udzungwa’s Magombera Forest Reserve when a leopard attacked and snatched away a female colobus, just meters from where Mwakisoma lay resting.
Andrea Bianchi, a consultant tropical botanist who has worked in the Eastern Arc since 2019, knew Mwakisoma well and relied on his expertise to help him document the region’s plant diversity, including the new species of rainforest tree, Tessmannia princeps, which he, Mwakisoma and colleagues described from the Udzungwa Mountains’ Mngeta Valley earlier this year.
Mwakisoma knew the indigenous names for hundreds of Eastern Arc plants, as well as their medicinal uses, says Bianchi, whose own understanding of Tanzania’s forests has been shaped by the Hehe names Mwakisoma taught him, rather than the Linnaean binomials of scientific taxonomy.
“Aloyce would often stop, point to a plant or part of it, and pronounce a name made up of two words, often complicated ones, like ‘muhomang’ambako — earache,’” Bianchi says.
“The explanation was simple and obvious. Muhomang’ambako [Vangueria apiculata] is one of the 500 or more Hehe names that Aloyce gave to trees, shrubs and flowers, while ‘earache’ referred to the ailment that the crushed leaves or boiled roots of Vangueria would cure.”
In July 2023, during a visit to another of the Eastern Arc’s massifs known as Nguru, the pair stumbled upon a tree with unusually large pods growing beside a field near the foot of the mountains. Bianchi took a sample of the trees’ leaves and pods and laid them on the hood of their vehicle, and Mwakisoma immediately identified them as a species of Millettia, using its Hehe name, mhafu.
The tree was in fact Millettia sacleuxii, long thought to be extinct.
“I was pleased to see, once again, scientific and [Mwakisoma’s] ethnobotanical knowledge align,” Bianchi says.
After years of only temporary work assignments, Mwakisoma had recently secured a steady job in a major project to restore parts of Udzungwa’s original rainforest. His intimate knowledge of native tree species — whether they thrived in sun or shade; when they produced fruit; what conditions their seeds needed to germinate — proved invaluable to the project’s success. “Aloyce, having spent over three decades in the forest, held and shared this vital knowledge,” Bianchi says.
In a tribute to Mwakisoma, the Udzungwa Landscape Strategy, a conservation nonprofit working with partners to promote conservation across the mountains, said: “Aloyce devoted to seeds and plants the same care, gentleness and attention that he gave to his friends, colleagues and loved ones.”
Mwakisoma leaves behind his partner, five children, as well as his mother, two brothers and a sister.
Banner image: Aloyce Mwakisoma studies a specimen of Rothmannia urcelliformis in the Udzungwa Mountains. Image courtesy of Andrea Bianchi.
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