On Thursday 24th of November 2016, Foulques Couvreur (FLS Production) and I organized an "avant première" of the award winning short documentary "Raphia: tree of life" (follow link for full movie) under my scientific supervision. This documentary and event is one of the outputs of the RAPHIA project. The event was attended by over 100 people (family, friends and colleagues), at the Vendôme cinema in Brussels. An excellent Q&A session followed the projection during which the public got acquainted with the RAPHIA project, Raphia palms, Africa and the technical difficulties of droning!
This movie is complementary to a second documentary that is due early december 2016 ("à l'échelle du Raphia"; "on Raphia and Man" (29 mins, directed by Joseph Fumtim & Thomas Couvreur, IRD).

Made a short video on the AFRODYN project. Images taken from several field trips during the project. Drone images from FLS production.

On Saturday 12th of November 2016, we travelled to the wonderful region of Oku (North West Cameroon) to project "à l'échelle du Raphia" ("On Raphia and Man"). The documentary relates the importance of the African Raphia palms and follows a team of researchers investigating the biodiversity, uses and economic importance of its species across Cameroon. We were accompanied by Philippe Le Gall (Entomologist, IRD), Joseph Fumtim (co producer, IRD), Suzanne Mogue (PhD Student, Université de Yaoundé 1) and Ariane Cosiaux (International Volunteer, IRD).
We were received by the Fon (king) of Oku, His Majesty Senteih II and the prince Shey Wilfred Mbunda as well as numerous other notables of the region.
The official version of the documentary will be available by end November.
​This project was funded by IRD and Agropolis International as part of the RAPHIA project.

Our article detailing the RAINBIO mega dataset is out!
With this article we publish one of the largest datasets of tropical African plant distributions to date. It contains over 600k unique georeferenced plant occurrences for over 22k plant species. Manual and automatic specimen checking was undertaken by the RAINBIO consortium. This article is published within the framework of the RAINBIO project, funded by FRB, CESAB calls.
 Link to the project web page here where you can download the database!