Universidade Kimpa VitaLoki Schmidt Garden Establishes Partnership with Angola

14 March 2024, by Claudia Sewig

Photo: UHH/Lautenschläger

A lot of official appointments Dr. Thea Lautenschläger and Nils Kleissenberg visiting the king of Bakongo land, Rei António Charles Muana Wuta Kabamba, and Kimbele’s administrator, Pedro Kogi Zu

Photo: UHH/Lautenschläger

Excursion to the Ambuila inselbergs

Photo: UHH/Lautenschläger

Dr. Thea Lautenschläger and Nils Kleissenberg with Kimpa Vita University employees

Photo: UHH/Lautenschläger

A dense rainforest only 5 years ago, large parts of the Serra Pingano were illegally cleared.

Photo: UHH/Lautenschläger

Dr. Thea Lautenschläger making a herbary collection

Angola’s province Uíge, located in the far north, is home to the last tropical rainforests of the Central African country. Dr. Thea Lautenschläger and Nils Kleissenberg from the Loki Schmidt Garden at Universität Hamburg spent 3 weeks in the region and at Uíge’s Kimpa Vita University to discuss a cooperation.

 “Kimpa Vita University in Uíge has had a cooperation with TU Dresden for the past 12 years, which I accompanied during my time there,” says Dr. Thea Lautenschläger. In her new role as academic director of the Loki Schmidt Garden, the University’s botanical garden, she will continue this collaboration. The cooperation with Angola will be expanded to include Universität Hamburg.

During her 3-week stay in February, Lautenschläger was accompanied by Nils Kleissenberg, technical head of the botanical garden in Klein-Flottbek. Both led discussions with Kimpa Vita researchers, employees of Uíge’s Ministry of Environment, and the German Embassy, among others. They also undertook multi-day excursions to the rainforests of the neighboring mountain slopes to gather plants and create a herbary collection.

Cooperation goals and objectives

The delegation from Hamburg pursued various goals: “On the one hand, we wanted to help set up, or rather expand Kimpa Vita University’s botanical garden. It already exists, but is completely overgrown. We were told that the new university principal aims to promote the garden despite funding problems,” says Lautenschläger.

There were also talks with the responsible staff at the Ministry of Environment. “Unfortunately, we discovered that half the mountain range we had planned to designate for conservation with the Ministry of Environment, has been cleared over the past 5 years. This is incredibly depressing. But it also shows that our commitment and collaboration efforts are crucial, as this year, the parliament is set to pass a resolution to put this area up for protection,” says Lautenschläger. The deforestation rate is spiking due to activities of illegal timber companies and an immense population growth with people forcing their way into the forests for farming purposes. These areas are extremely valuable in botanical respect, and Thea Lautenschläger has already written several reports for the Angolan government about this.

New Africa focus

In recent years, she has described 2 new species in the area, a balsam and an aloe species. “This was also covered by local Angolan media. However, they reported the plants have a life-prolonging effect, which we had to correct, once again,” says Lautenschläger. “If we announce in Germany that we found a new species, people will consider this a biodiversity and species diversity gain and be happy. In Angola, people will ask: ‘What can it do?’ Use aspects are immensely important there—anything without can be replaced in favor of bananas.”

Aiming to acquaint visitors of the Loki Schmidt Garden with African plant life, the new greenhouses in Klein-Flottbek—intended as an interim home for plants while the greenhouses in Planten un Blomen are closed for refurbishment—will in future be used to develop a new Africa focus. Thus, scientific work on botanical collections will become a central theme, says Lautenschläger. Past researchers from Hamburg collected primarily ice plants from the southern, drier parts of Africas, which can be combined here with tropical plants from Uíge in Angola.