71. This satellite meeting reported on the “Lessons learnt on sustainable forest management in Africa”, project undertaken jointly by the African Academy of Sciences (AAS), Sweden, and FAO. AAS acted through the Secretariat and Board of the Africa Forestry Research Network (AFORNET), Sweden through the Committee on International Forestry of the Royal Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KSLA), and FAO through its Forestry Department. The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided funding for the project.
72. The Commission was informed that all studies commissioned under the project aimed at identifying the most urgent issues and concerns to which Africa should give priority in international processes such as UNFF and other environment-related conventions and processes; and at producing the information needed to enhance the participation of Africa in these international forest-related processes.
73. The results of these studies were presented in tabular forms, showing the main issues, associated lessons learnt and key observations from each of these issues. Discussions that followed the presentation stressed the importance of documenting lessons learnt on SFM in Africa. The meeting observed that the results of the initiative are interesting and could potentially make significant contributions to the next UNFF meeting in May 2004 if they were presented in a more systematic way. The meeting therefore recommended that the project team endeavour to present the project results in a more systematic way and submit them to FAO for presentation at the next UNFF.