Fountain of Hope Forestry

"The earth is what we all have in common."

Our love for nature

Forests cover 31 percent of the world’s land surface, store an estimated 296 gigatonnes of carbon, and are home to most of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity.

Forests are a source of fiber, fuel, food, and fodder, and they provide livelihoods for millions of people, including many of the world’s poorest. Some 2.4 billion people use wood-based energy for cooking. Forests help mitigate climate change and improve soil, air, and water quality. If sustainably managed, forests are also a source of renewable raw materials, making a crucial contribution to building circular economies.

Fountain of Hope Forestry is a company dedicating its activities to sustainable environmental management by growing locally adaptable bio-energy tree crops and converting them to green charcoal while promoting other ecosystem-conserving enterprises.

How Forestry contributes to the African Development Bank’s High 5 Priorities: challenges and opportunities - March 2018

By African Natural Resource centre

Historically, much of the forest management emphasis has been on producing wood and wood products for local and international trade. There is increasing awareness of the importance of forests in providing global public goods. Development workers are increasingly considering forestry to offer pathways for rural economic development and improved livelihoods. The idea is that forestry initiatives will help reduce poverty and provide food and nutrition security, healthcare, and shelter. They could also generate income for national governments and contribute to climate change adaptation and mitigation. Other areas of impact would be biodiversity conservation and management, improved hydrology, water availability, and environmental sustainability.

Size of African forests

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO),3 Africa’s forests and woodlands are estimated to cover 650 million hectares, or 21.8 percent of the continent’s land area. Recent estimates put the African forest area at 675 million hectares or 23 percent of the overall land area of the continent. In addition, there is an estimated 350 million hectares (13 percent of the land mass) of “other wooded land.” This is made up of wooded savannah, thickets and shrublands.There are huge volumes of wood contained in “trees outside forests,” which include trees and other woody plants in rural landscapes (farms, pastures, agroforestry and horticultural systems) as well as in urban settings, on private land, along roads, and not forgetting planted forests estimated at about 15 million hectares.

Distribution of African forests by sub-regions and countries

Using the FAO (2003) estimation, African forests and woodlands are unevenly distributed among sub-regions and countries. This creates significant imbalances in the demand for and supply of forest-derived goods and services. Five sub-regions may be identified with the following proportions of the African forest estate: central

Africa (37.1 percent), southern Africa (28.0 percent), east Africa (13.2 percent), west Africa (11.1percent) and north Africa (10.5 percent) (Figure 1). North and west Africa are the least forested sub-regions, largely as a result of their extremely arid conditions.5 The sub-regional classification in Figure 1 conceals intercountry differences. Considering that forest cover is a good indicator of the forest status of any given country, and that policies or strategies to alleviate forestry problems have to be implemented at the national level, the classification of African countries into forest cover categories is more relevant than the sub-regional classification. This analytical classification brings together at a glance, those with very low, low, moderate, adequate, high or very high forest cover.6 Based on this approach, six forest cover categories were identified with the features shown in Table 1. Obvious conclusions may be deduced from this analysis. Forest endowment ranges from very rich to very poor forested countries in Africa. The variation in forest endowments between regions and countries offer great opportunities for intra-African trade in forest products and services7 to ensure the maximum contribution of African forestry and forests to the High 5 priorities of the African Development Bank in Africa.

Distribution of African forests by sub-regions (%)

Central Africa

57%

East Africa

13.2%

North Africa

10.5%

South Africa

28%

South Africa

11.1%

Forest cover catagories

Category	% of Forest Cover	Country	% of African Land	% of African Forest	% Of African Population
Category 1 Forest Crisis Countries	0-5%	Algeria, Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Libya, Mauritania, Niger, Tunisia, W. Sahara	30.4%	1.5%	25.7%
Category 2 Low Forest Countries	6-10%	Chad, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, South Africa, Togo	12.8%	5.1%	10.8%
Category 3 Modest Forest Cover Countries	11-20%	Eritrea, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia	11.9%	7.5%	21%
Category 4 Adequate Forest Cover Countries	21-30%	Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Sao Tome & Principe, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda	16.8%	19.8%	20%
Category 5 High Forest Cover Countries	31-50%	Central African Republic, Gambia, Liberia, Mozambique, Senegal, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe	12.5%	23.5%	11.7%
Category 6 Very High Forest Cover Countries	Over 50%	Angola, Cameroon, Rep of Congo, DR of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Seychelles	15.6%	42.6%	10.9%

Forestry and the High 5s

The central focus of forest management has been on the realisation of the economic, social and environmental benefits, as prescribed by sustainable forest management principles.8 These tenets are well-aligned with the High 5 priorities of the African Development Bank.

1. Light up and power Africa

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), 650 million people in Africa alone have no access to electricity. Most people living in Africa use significantly less electricity in a year than the global average – and 7 out of 10 people in sub-Saharan Africa live without it every day.9 Traditional indoor stoves fueled by woodfuel, coal, crop waste and dung that are commonly used in Sub-Saharan Africa burn fuel inefficiently. They produce smoke and gases by incomplete combustion, causing long-term respiratory health problems and deaths, projected at about 4000 people per day by 2030. The development and efficient use of wood biomass has not been receiving adequate attention compared to other energy sources. This is despite the fact that wood biomass is the dominant source of energy for Sub-Saharan Africa, where about 93 percent of rural households and 58 percent of urban households rely on it11 for vital social, economic and environmental benefits. Complementary to creating employment for the poor segments of society that generally do not have access to formal employment, the contribution of the wood-based biomass energy sector to the national economy is significant and can easily surpass other economic sectors.12 Extrapolating to the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa, rough estimates indicate that the charcoal industry in SubSaharan Africa was worth more than US$8 billion in 2007, with more than 7 million people dependent on the sector for their livelihood. Predictions are that the economic value of the charcoal industry in Sub-Saharan Africa may exceed US$12 billion by 2030, employing almost 12 million people.

In terms of electricity generation, biomass power plants are said to have strong potential in the global power industry and could contribute to electricity generation in Africa. This is because Africa has abundant biomass resources from agriculture and forestry. Biomass energy is known to be renewable, carbon neutral and cost-effective, compared to coal-based thermal power, hydropower, nuclear power, wind power and natural gas power.14 Given the continued importance of wood-based biomass energy in Sub-Saharan Africa, a sustainably designed and operated biomass energy sector could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help launch low carbon-growth strategies.

2. Feed Africa

3. Industrialise Africa

4. Integrate Africa

5. Improve the quality of life for the people of Africa

Challenges and opportunities

Forestry as a business endeavour can contribute enormously to the green economy. It can also help boost state revenues in many African countries. However, the realisation of these opportunities depends on the governance of the forest industry. The ways in which forests are managed, and local value added is provided make a difference. Stringent policy measures can lead to rapid and concrete outcomes.

As a raw material, wood provides a resilient basis for a variety of conversion processes, which are yet to be tried in most African forested countries. In some developed countries, forestry has been found to offer a significant potential solution to endemic rural under-employment and unemployment. It is also a pacemaker for the primary sector. Basically, the challenges for forestry to the African Development Bank’s High 5 priorities essentially dwell on poor governance arrangements and the high trade deficits associated with low value addition and raw material export tendencies.

Conceptually, value added is the difference between the costs of goods purchased by an enterprise and the value of the products it sells in addition to the amount available for payment of wages and salaries, interest, profits, sales taxes and depreciation. It would be useful to devise and implement a downstream processing policy that ensures higher conversion rates and the development of quality products.

African countries seem to be lagging behind, at least in terms of taking advantage of the abundant raw materials and opportunities for value addition for increased economic gains and job creation. In most timber producing African countries, for only three customarily produced primary processed wood products, the aggregate import and export values with countries outside Africa in 2014 were US$ 3.3 billion and US$ 409.7 million respectively. This leaves a trade deficit of about US$ 2.9 billion for the continent.

The trade deficits in Africa are even more glaring when secondary and tertiary processed wood products are considered. At the country level, from 2006 to 2013, Liberia had negative trade balances of US$ 11.7 million and US$ 167, 850 associated with the importation of plywood and veneers respectively. Trade deficits associated with three secondary processed wood products and eight tertiary processed wood products were US$ 21.75 million and US$ 11.62 million respectively. These trade deficits for Liberia, a forest-endowed country, add up to US$ 45.25 million over a period of eight years, or US$ 5.66 million per year.

Preliminary analyses (2006-2013) of trade in eight tertiary wood products for five forest-endowed central African countries and seven west African countries show trade deficits of over US$ 731 million and approximately US$ 6 billion respectively. The outcry is that over the same period (2006-2013), Indonesia had a trade surplus of US$ 28.1 billion for the eight tertiary wood products. Vietnam’s furniture exports alone were just over US$ 7 billion in 2016. The implication is that the importation of processed wood products greatly outweigh the economic benefits that African countries may derive from the export of primary wood products. Meanwhile, small-scale forest enterprises based on furniture and carpentry have the potential value of US$ 44-271/m3 of sawn wood processed to finished products.

Overall, African countries suffer from great trade deficits associated with the importation of secondary processed wood products, while Asian and Latin American countries are basically making trade surpluses from the same products. For instance, from 2006 to 2013, while African countries (shaded in blue in the graph below) made a total trade deficit of over US$ 1 billion, Asian countries (green) made a trade surplus of US$ 66.3 billion. Latin American countries (brown) made US$ 6.8 billion over the same period, linked to the three secondary processed wood products.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Forestry is intricately connected to many other industrial sectors, resulting in better productive functions in the economy. This is because most wood products are intermediate goods and are used as raw materials for other industries, such as construction, furniture, packaging, printing, and textile manufacturing.

Forest products are known to be green, renewable, recyclable and versatile. They can be fed into different industrialisation processes to maximise and harness their full potential as African commodities. In this regard, the connection between forestry and some of the critical indicators of economic development such as capital, industrialisation, foreign exchange earnings, labour and employment are achievable with the right supportive policies in place. The forestry sector remains one of the primary means for ensuring climate change adaptation and mitigation for improved and resilient rural and urban livelihoods in Africa.

Scientific evidence confirms that the trade potential for wood products in Africa is huge. However, recorded trade between African countries appears low. This suggests the importance of guiding policy towards enhancing trade, transforming illegal trade to legal trade in these products, breaking down the barriers to trade and promoting the integration of markets.

The importance of ensuring that policy decisions are backed by data (trends, magnitudes, trade flows in volume and values and by product categories), cannot be emphasised enough for the promotion the forestry sector. Such decisions can lead to improving the woodbased industry, and abetter understanding of illegalities in the sector and how to contain them. It can help remove barriers to trade, and impact many other decisions that, cumulatively, will contribute to creating a continental economy that will strengthen each country and create a prosperous and industrialized Africa. This would be in line with the developmental aspirations of the African Union Agenda 2063.

It is crucial for timber producing African countries to define the degree of self-sufficiency for all wood product categories to avoid the huge trade deficits associated with the importation of further processed wood products. This will require a forest and forest industry basic plan that can serve as a national policy measure on forestry, subject to regular reviews to reflect realities on wood use volumes in the short, medium and long terms.

The changing character of African economies, however, will require continuous adjustments on the roles of forest resources in contributing to human wellbeing and environmental sustainability. In that dynamic situation, the forestry sector will warrant further development only if it can supply its products with increasing efficiency – with the aim of producing social, economic and environmental benefits. Forestry is only good if it produces the goods and services that people want and can afford.

Thus, in a situation of underdevelopment, the forester cannot forget that his discipline is somewhere between the natural, economic and social sciences. In this circumstance, the question of forestry and the contribution to the African Development High 5 priorities strategies deserves continually detailed analysis of both on how to relate the present requirements to future needs and to temporise the essentially ‘natural machine’ with the latest social and technological concepts of economic, social and environmental benefits. The success of African forestry in this direction will enhance the possibility of Africa’s take-off to sustained economic growth and development considerably.

Recommendations

The above discussion and statistics on the forestry sector in Africa suggest a high level of dependence of the people of Africa on forests. Development programmes in Africa, therefore, have to look at food security, household wellbeing and income generation from not just traditional agriculture but in combination with forest products that are important for household nutrition, health, income generation and employment opportunities. A major prerequisite though will require recognition by policy-makers of the importance of the forest-product value chains in Africa’s development – especially through the setting up of favourable business climates and facilitating access to inputs, finance, training and transport. As it conducts operations in its regional member countries, the African Development Bank should intensify policy analysis, knowledge generation and support for forest-product value chains. Leveraging forestry in implementing the High 5 priorities is a strategic investment that will lead to sound development outcomes. Policy initiatives could include the following actions:

Encourage value addition to forest products, notably wood and non-wood forest products.
Promote biomass energy.
Urge the use of industrial plantations of desirable tree species.
Promote sustainable forest management.
Integrate forestry and agriculture for a climate change resilient, productive systems and agroforestry.
Promote intra-African trade in forest products and related commodities.
Encourage good governance and better institutional arrangements.

African Natural Resources Centre. African Development Bank Group

Our Projects

We are into growth of indigenous bio-energy trees, efficient charcoal production, tree and nursery management, bee keeping (apiculture) and farmer managed natural regeneration.