Afika Njwaxu is currently a PhD student at the Department of Environmental Science, Rhodes University. Afika’s interests lie within sustainability sciences with a passion for use of natural resources, rural livelihoods, and forest-dependent communities. Her past projects include the importance of community engagement, the use of non-timber forests products by coastal communities in the Wild Coast of South Africa and forest regeneration on agricultural abandoned land. Afika is currently writing up her PhD project titled assessing cultural keystone species in the Wild Coast, South Africa; through a fellowship at the KLI.