<p>In tropical regions, forest restoration is regarded as a valuable strategy for mitigating the impacts of global warming and improving the livelihoods of local populations. Although numerous international donors have provided substantial financial support for forest restoration in the tropics, the strategies and effectiveness of these initiatives in Central Africa have been poorly documented and never synthesised. To this end, we carried out a review of forest restoration initiatives involving local populations in Central Africa, following a systematic literature review approach. We retained 64 publications, pertaining to 26 initiatives that predominantly applied agroforestry techniques, used exotic species, and were implemented in the Democratic Republic of Congo (<i>n</i> = 12 initiatives), Cameroon (<i>n</i> = 11), Cameroon &amp; Gabon (<i>n</i> = 1), Rwanda (<i>n</i> = 1), and Central African Republic (<i>n</i> = 1). This review shows that: (1) most forest restoration initiatives were based on pre-established technical approaches, mainly agroforestry or plantations of exotic species; (2) there was a lack of monitoring and data sharing; (3) local people were rarely consulted on the choice of technical approach and (4) prior consent, proposed land arrangements and benefit sharing were seldom mentioned. Based on our analysis, the two key issues for donors and project managers are: (1) building real partnerships with local people, which can mean compromising and downgrading objectives, and (2) monitoring their experiences and sharing the findings to improve future sustainable forest restoration initiatives.</p>