 Zambia's largely undocumented charcoal trade is huge. Estimated to contribute 3% to the national GDP, the sector informally employs half a million people, most of whom are rural smallholder producers. Sylvia, a mother of five, is one of them. She lives in Nimba district, one of the highest charcoal-producing regions in the country. I was living in poverty. That's when I started doing charcoal production. Now I earn a good income. It pays for my children's school fees and my daily needs like soap and sugar. Though charcoal may fetch a high price, it doesn't come cheap. The production cycle is painstaking, and women are increasingly involved at each step of the charcoal value chain. One must chop trees, roll logs to make a kiln, set the kiln ablaze and let it burn for two weeks, then pack the charcoal chips into bags to sell. 27-year-old Mavuto needs to walk one hour from her house to get to this production site. It's very tough. This job is supposed to be for men because of the physical labor, but women are supporting the men now to earn a living. The high profits of the charcoal trade has led to increased production levels at the expense of zombies' forests. Although laws exist to regulate the trade, they are rarely followed. Nimba is a very vast district, and there are areas that we don't touch, maybe in two, three, four months, and you may not know what is happening in those areas. And again, in other instances, we have a lot of other responsibilities as foresters. So you find that you are busy with one other thing. The people are getting in, producing charcoal and transporting it to Lusak, which is a very difficult situation to control. Under the Countries Forest Act, both charcoal producers and sellers require permits. These permits must be obtained at the local forestry district where the individual lives. The production license allows them to produce charcoal within a 14-day period. Then, to move the charcoal out of the district for sale, a second license, called a conveyance license, is required. Yet these rules aren't strictly enforced, so most people operate illegally. There are middlemen who bring me this charcoal that I buy in bulk. I have no idea where they actually source the charcoal. Traders or middlemen from the city are charging two to three times more for a bag of charcoal than the sourcing price asked by producers in the rural area. Forestry department, because of their limitation, they don't really monitor charcoal production at production level. So I think it will be very important monitoring the whole chain from production to trade action to make sure that we know what is happening at each stage. The Centre for International Forestry Research, C4, is currently helping the Zambian government develop recommendations to address this issue. Beyond saving the forest, this project aims to boost the equity and well-being of smallholder charcoal producers.