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Eru: Growing Popularity of Cameroon’s Nutritious Wild Vine
By Matt Styslinger
Until a few decades ago, the now popular African wild vegetable eru—the common name used for two very similar vines of the species Gnetum africanum and Gnetum buchholzianum—remained an obscure forest food in Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But after the prices of major export crops in Cameroon—cocoa and coffee—plummeted in the 1980s and 1990s, and subsequent food price spikes, farmer’s lost their ability to buy food. Cameroon’s rural population turned to the forests for its food and income, and poor farmers began harvesting and selling eru on mass. Originally consumed by Cameroon’s forest-dwelling Bayangi people, eru is now one of Cameroon’s most widely consumed vegetables. Hundreds of tons of eru are exported every week to Nigeria—where it is known as okazi—and overseas for consumption by Central and West Africans living abroad.
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