Bauhinia thonningii is a woody leguminous tree species, which is endowed with enormous soil improvement, medicinal, nutritional, and socio-ecological benefits in African. The current study was carried out to systematically review and document findings on the multiple benefits of B. thonningii and thereby identify gaps and opportunities for further comprehensive studies. A systematic and manual search was conducted to retrieve relevant articles published from 1974 to June 2021. Electronic databases of PubMed (Medline), Google Scholar, and grey literature were employed to access the studies. Accordingly, 100 articles and 2 thesis papers were finally included in this study. The study shows B. thonningii tree species improve soil fertility and its abundant litter accumulated from the leaves of B. thonningii trees contributed to increased organic carbon and total nitrogen content. The plant parts are used in several traditional medicine to treat different human and animal ailments. The pods and seeds of the plant contained a lot of important nutrients and nutritional value, beneficial to human as well as animal health. The plant plays a key role in biomass production and carbon sequestration potential. Owing to its multiple benefits, there is an urgent need to facilitate the scaling-up of the use of the tree by using various approaches. The findings will serve as a useful reference for further in depth investigations on the multifunctional uses of the plant across different ecozone as well as supporting the scale up of the benefits of the species.

紫荆是一种木本豆科树种，在非洲具有巨大的土壤改良、药用、营养和社会生态效益。目前的研究是为了系统地审查和记录关于B. thonningii的多种益处的发现，从而确定进一步综合研究的差距和机会。进行系统和手动搜索以检索 1974 年至 2021 年 6 月发表的相关文章。使用 PubMed (Medline)、Google Scholar 和灰色文献的电子数据库来访问这些研究。因此，100篇文章和2篇论文最终被纳入本研究。该研究表明B. thonningii树种提高土壤肥力和从B. thonningii的叶子积累的大量凋落物树木有助于增加有机碳和总氮含量。植物部分用于多种传统医学，以治疗不同的人类和动物疾病。植物的豆荚和种子含有许多重要的营养成分和营养价值，对人类和动物的健康都有好处。该植物在生物质生产和碳封存潜力方面发挥着关键作用。由于其多重好处，迫切需要通过使用各种方法来促进树的使用范围的扩大。研究结果将为进一步深入研究该植物在不同生态区的多功能用途以及支持扩大该物种的利益提供有用的参考。