Carpentry wood | Oil essentials | Cosmetic | Traditional medicine

The famous Touloucouna oil has anti-inflammatory, antiseptic and analgesic properties. At the end of the 19th century, it was sent in large quantities to Marseille for the manufacture of soaps. It is still used in Africa for its many virtues, for example for massaging the rib cage against coughs or to hydrate the skin when the harmattan blows. In animal husbandry, the oil is applied to the wounds of livestock to kill the caterpillars.

Carapa procera, called African crabwood, is a species of tree in the genus Carapa, native to the West African tropics and to the Amazon rainforest, and introduced to Vietnam. Some authorities have split off the South American population into its own species, Carapa surinamensis. The nuts are intensively collected in the wild for their oil, a non-timber forest product.  In tropical Africa, the species is increasingly threatened.^[5] Malaysia, Indonesia and Kenya.