The PROTA Handbook Series is a large illustrated encyclopedia series of utility plant species found in Tropical Africa. PROTA Handbook Encyclopedia Series Description National Herbarium and Botanical Gardens of Malawi Parc Botanique et Zoologique de Tsimbazaza Ĭentre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique Agromisa and PROTA were considered suitable partners because they were both committed to bridging the gap between scientific knowledge and traditional knowledge and were open access publishers of books with practical information about sustainable agriculture for small-farmers in Africa. In Wageningen, PROTA also partnered with the EU funded, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and the now-retired Agromisa Foundation to help distribute its various publications. PROTA also had regional offices with institutional partners in Burkina Faso, France, Gabon, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Uganda, and the United Kingdom. PROTA had representatives in 20 African countries and dual headquarters in Wageningen, Netherlands and Nairobi, Kenya. The programme operated through an international network of institutional partners and collaborators of the PROTA Foundation. It is uncertain how much of the PROTA Recommends Series has been digitized. All of the PROTA's encyclopedia volumes have been digitized and are available for free as Open access publications from the Wageningen University library. As of 2019, Prota4U had about 1,500 daily visitors and 500,000 unique visitors each year. Information in the PROTA database can also be accessed at the website in a different format. Preservation Īs of 2022, the PROTA database Prota4U is still online in an archive-like capacity at Wageningen University with articles written in English and French. Since the program's retirement there have been ongoing efforts to fundraise and preserve PROTA's various publications and online database. During its operation, PROTA received funds from the European Union's Directorate-General for International Partnerships, Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture, Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Wageningen University, COFRA Foundation, International Tropical Timber Organization, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At the point of its retirement, about 50% of PROTA's encyclopedia series was complete. PROTA retired in 2013 while facing large operational costs after its funding expired. to provide research-driven educational materials to vocational and farmer education programs in Africa. to help graduate students and researchers identify research gaps.to support intellectual property rights related to the commercial use of African plants.to make research about African plants more accessible.to facilitate socially inclusive, collaborative research about African plants from experts in Africa and elsewhere.to promote the sustainable use of plants to the public and private sectors.PROTA also was an international NGO registered in Nairobi, Kenya that used information from its publications to structure a number of community projects involving over 800 farmers in Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Madagascar. In this way PROTA publications include Africa-centered references and perspectives, which is a major focus of the broader discipline of African studies. PROTA's database and various publications are considered unique in their epistemological approach because they were compiled as much from obscure publications as from peer-reviewed and popular literature, gathered throughout Africa and Europe. In other words, PROTA was dedicated to making the useful plant biodiversity of tropical Africa better-known and respected. To this end, PROTA's overall goal was synthesize diverse, published information for approximately 8,000 plants used in tropical Africa, then make it widely accessible through an online database and various book publications. PROTA supported the sustainable use of these useful plants to preserve culture, reduce poverty and hunger, and respond to climate change. PROTA was concerned with increasing accessibility to traditional knowledge and scientific information about many types of African plants including: dyes & tannins, fibers, medicinal plants, stimulants, tropical timbers, vegetables, tubers (carbohydrates), oil seeds, ornamental plants, forage plants, and cereals. PROTA produced a large database and various publications about Africa's useful plants. Plant Resources of Tropical Africa, known by its acronym PROTA, is a retired NGO and interdisciplinary documentation programme active between 20. Images which represent some of PROTA's various functions including international conferences, book publications, and agricultural community projects in Africa.
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