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The Tropical African Plants Project is a large-scale effort designed to establish an important new biodiversity data resource. The initiative began with a “proof of concept” project, supported by the JRS Biodiversity Foundation, and led by Prof. Alex Asase (University of Ghana), which resulted in the digitization of more than 250,000 biodiversity data records from European and West African herbaria. The present effort, supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, will lead to the digitization of more than 1.1M herbarium specimens and associated data records from across tropical Africa housed in 21 U.S. herbaria. Links to both proposals are provided below.
JRS 2014: West African Plants Project (led by Prof. Alex Asase)
NSF 2022: Tropical African Plants Project
Specimens from the following countries are being targeted in this digitization project: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Cote D'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, and Zambia. However, specimens from other countries may also be digitized as part of efficient workflows.
More information about the project can be found on the Tropical African Plants (TAP) TCN website.
Our collaborative endeavor offers many opportunities for individuals and institutions around the world to participate in the Tropical African Plants Project.
For researchers and students interested in using the data, they are openly available and accessible via this portal. Individuals with more specialized or larger-scale requests are encouraged to contact the project leadership listed below.
Institutions with herbaria and other biocollections interested in contributing data should contact the Symbiota Support Hub, which has created and is maintaining the system of portals for biodiversity data.