Educational information, not medical advice — ask your doctor or midwife.
Track African peach (country fig) with reminders and record whether it helped, in the app.
African peach is a shrub or small tree of the West African savannah. Its botanical name is Sarcocephalus latifolius, once called Nauclea latifolia. In Hausa it is tafashiya.
The red fruit is eaten as a wild food. The root and the bark are the parts used as medicine. They are boiled in water to make a bitter drink.
Here is the honest verdict. Almost all research on this plant is in test tubes and in rats. Long traditional use is not proof that it works, and it is not proof that it is safe.
No one has shown how African peach works in a human body. The lab work only points in a few directions.
In test tubes, root and bark extracts slow some bacteria. They also slow malaria parasites in dish studies. Whether this happens inside a person is not known.
In rats and mice, root extracts eased pain and brought down fever. Some animal work also showed lower blood sugar. Results in animals often do not carry over to people.
One claim needs care. A 2013 paper reported the painkiller tramadol in root bark from Cameroon. Later work tied that finding to tramadol given to farm animals in the area, not to the plant itself.
Most use is home-made rather than packaged. Common forms are:
- Root or stem bark boiled into a bitter tea (a decoction) - Dried root or bark ground to a powder - Leaf infusions, used less often - Bark soaked in alcohol or in local spirits - The fresh fruit, eaten as an ordinary food - Capsules, powders and tinctures sold online
Many labels still use the old name Nauclea latifolia. Imported products rarely state how much active matter they hold. Quality checks are usually absent.
African peach has deep roots in West African herbal practice. Surveys of healers in Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Ghana and Burkina Faso list it again and again.
Root and bark drinks were given for fever and for malaria. Other recorded uses were toothache, stomach pain, loose stools and worms. Bark washes were applied to wounds and sores.
Some communities used it in childbirth and for sexual complaints. The fruit was gathered in the bush and sold in markets. Written records of this use go back through the 1900s.
Stop and see a doctor if you get stomach pain, vomiting or a rash after taking it.
Get medical help the same day for:
- Yellow eyes or yellow skin - Dark urine or very pale stools - Little or no urine - Shaking, sweating and confusion, which can mean low blood sugar
Get emergency care at once for a fever with confusion, fits or very fast breathing. That can be severe malaria, and it needs hospital treatment.
African peach is not approved as a medicine in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia or the European Union. Where it is sold there, it is sold as a food supplement, and health claims are not allowed. In much of West Africa the fruit is an ordinary food and the bark is sold freely in markets.
Evidence grades and traditional-use labels are explained in our methodology. Nothing here is medical advice.
Reviewed by the HealisticMD editorial team How we grade evidence →
The published evidence for African peach (country fig) is weak or absent. That usually means no controlled trial has tested it, not that a trial found it ineffective — the two are different, and we grade only what has been published.
What it is typically used for, usual dose, cautions, and the study behind it where real trial data exists.
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