Decimated forests

Africa: The road to plundering precious woods

in depth

This article is part of the dossier:

Timber Trafficking

By Marie Toulemonde

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Posted on July 14, 2022 11:01

 © Three-quarters of Africa’s tropical timber is shipped to China. MONTAGE JA: Alfredo D’AMATO/PANOS-REA
Three-quarters of Africa’s tropical timber is shipped to China. MONTAGE JA: Alfredo D’AMATO/PANOS-REA

For more than 10 years, this illegal trafficking has been spreading in Africa from country to country as forests are decimated. We take a look at the figures through our infographics.

This is part 5 of a 6-part series

The figures are edifying: 123,000 tonnes, or 4,500 containers, 365,900 logs or 182,900 trees. This is the quantity of rosewood, also known as vène wood or kosso, which was illegally transported from Mali to be processed in Chinese factories between May 2020 and January 2022, according to the International Environment Agency (EIA). This is in violation of a law that has been in force for two years prohibiting its harvesting and exportation and despite its 2017 inclusion on the list of threatened species of the Convention on International Trade in Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

As in Casamance, western Cameroon and eastern DRC, the looting of precious wood have flourished as a result of political instability. For more than a decade, this illegal trafficking has spread from country to country in Africa as forests are decimated.

Orchestrated by the Chinese

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