Non-timber forest product types and its income contribution to rural households in the Horn of Africa: a systematic review

Abstract Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are those that come from forests other than those that provide timber. In order to identify the NTFPs’ financial contribution and usage categories based on regional and temporal patterns in the Horn of Africa countries, we performed a systematic review of 60 papers published between 2010 and 2022. The review used the search terms Non-Timber Forest Product* OR Non- Wood Forest Product*(NWFPs) OR Minor Forest Product in combination with Livelihoods and also Horn of Africa countries to thoroughly search the articles on the Google Scholar, Research4life, Scopus, Science direct, ResearchGate portals, EMBASE, and PubMed databases. The records contained information about the paper’s title, abstract, keywords, authors, country, NTFP income amount, NTFP usage type, and publication year. The recorded data were analyzed using R Studio, IBM SPSS Statistics 26, and Excel 2019. The majority of the research article for this review was done in Ethiopia (45%), Sudan (22%) and Kenya (17%), respectively. According to the review’s findings, NTFPs have a significant impact on rural household income in six nations, the average NTFP overall revenue was 24.41%. There were more than 35 NTFP uses and the source of product in the Horn of African Countries however, Gum Arabic, Food, Firewood, Medicinal plant, and honey were the five NTFP usage types that were used by people and found in almost in all countries of the Horn of Africa. The fact that different countries utilize different types of NTFPs, the most commonly used types of NTFPs have statistically significances differ (p < 0.05). According to the systematic review, the Horn of Africa is rich in NTFPs, which enhance rural income.