The economy of the Ituri Forest

The forest has not played a large part in the Congolese national economy. Only a fraction of its area is exploited for timber because of difficulty of access. A few gold mines operated before the country gained independence, but extraction is now largely restricted to panning by individuals. Cotton growing has all but disappeared. Oil palm cultivation has declined to such an extent that the area is a net importer of palm oil. The larger coffee plantations are being replaced by small independent planters. An illicit ivory trade prospers, despite rapidly declining elephant populations. There are attractions for a tourist industry, but transportation and hotel facilities are poor or absent.

Access to the Ituri Forest is extremely difficult. There are no public transportation facilities. Rivers and streams are unnavigable, and the few existing roads are all dirt and often in poor repair. From the southeast, entrance to the forest can be made from Goma, which lies about 125 miles to the south on the northern shore of Lake Kivu, or from Bunia, which is some 60 miles to the east. From the west the best road is from Kisangani through Nia-Nia.

Study and exploration

The Egyptians knew of the existence of the Pygmies; Pepi II Neferkare, last king of the 6th dynasty (c. 2325–c. 2150 bc), had Pygmies at his court, and they were depicted on Egyptian pottery some 4,000 years ago. The German botanist Georg Schweinfurth, arriving in the Ituri in 1869 from the north, was the first European to see and write about the Mbuti (The Heart of Africa; 1873). Stanley was the first to cross the forest from west to east, following essentially the same route as the present Kisangani-to-Bunia road. In the 1930s the Jesuit missionary Paul Schebesta undertook the first anthropological studies of the people of the Ituri. Since then, many aspects of the behaviour, ecology, and growth and demography of the Bambuti and their villager neighbours have been studied by anthropologists from the United States, Europe, and Japan.