The aim of this story is to understand and learn how climate change and environmental protection is being tackled in other countries but within Africa.
Focus on environmental stories across Africa
Yipala is nestled among flat grassland sparsely dotted with towering aged trees. Every few miles, mounds of shea nuts are drying in the early morning sun. And in the depths of the community, a rogue timber factory waits to resume operations.
The factory, whose activities are entirely illegal, has been shuttered at least twice. Since its last government shutdown in 2022, none of the factory’s machines have been destroyed nor its vast logs of rosewood burned as a deterrent. Giant cuts of rosewood in the hundreds are stacked high in the backyard. Heavy machinery with labels and instructions written in Mandarin lay waiting to begin slicing and dicing.
It epitomizes the battle underway to protect Ghana’s portion of the threatened Upper Guinean forests – one of the world’s most biodiverse tropical rainforests—a battle in which the agency chiefly responsible for protecting forests finds itself increasingly at the center of trafficking activities.
Industrial logging in Ghana is rife with corruption and lucrative licenses have been handed out by political figures, according to the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nongovernmental group. Those involved in smuggling rosewood are rarely prosecuted.
In 2019, a Chinese national, Helena Huang—known to Ghanaians as the “Rosewood Queen” and different from Aisha Huang who was jailed for illegal mining last December —was arrested, skipped bail, was rearrested, and sent back to China instead of being prosecuted for transporting rosewood through the Yipala factory, trading as a company named BrivyWelss.
Most of those who worked at BrivyWelss, which later changed its name to Zagos New Style Company, were Ghanaian locals and a few Nigerians, the factory’s gatekeeper Mbaaba Kaper said. The manager and funding came from China.
“It is not uncommon to see the Chinese around in rural areas working with the local people,” said Takal Silas Uwumborge, a doctoral student at the University for Development Studies in Tamale, northern Ghana. Uwumborge has been researching rosewood deforestation in the community.
“Because poverty is endemic in rural areas … they are able to bribe the police, they are able to bribe the officials and transport logged timber to Ghana’s ports. Those deported re-enter Ghana under new identities to continue running rosewood cartels”
Takal Silas Uwumborge, PHD Student at University for Development Studies in Tamale, Ghana
“Ghana has a very fragile ecosystem. If we unsustainably harvest what is there we might never get these trees back because of the issues of climate change,” he added.
Rosewood Trade Restrictions, Corruption
Rosewood species are under trade restrictions within the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), meaning sold timber must have been legally sourced.
Ghanaian authorities set up a seven-member committee to investigate allegations of corruption in rosewood trading in 2019 and 2020 and found no evidence of wrongdoing by any government official. But those who were part of the committee, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they found “multiple instances” in which government officials were linked to illegal rosewood logging.
Some members of Ghana’s committee of inquiry told CGSP that those instances were redacted from the officially published report.
Jeremiah Abubakari Seidu, who was part of the committee and agreed to be named, said, “We did the investigation. We found all of them culpable”. In one case in 2020, having investigated rosewood logging and impounded a container full of rosewood, Seidu’s car was shot at by unknown assailants while passing through the forest.
Different governments in Ghana over the years have announced trade bans on rosewood, lifted and re-introduced them several times. Even when a total ban is in place, Ghana’s timber and forestry ministers are accused of illegally issuing permits to log.
More than 50% of the 540,000 tons of rosewood exports by volume in Ghana occurred during the bans between 2012 and 2019. From January 2015 to June 2019, $300 million worth of rosewood was illegally logged.
In 2021 alone, the EIA noted that China imported about 3,007, 750kg of rosewood. Rosewood trees have reduced by half between 2013 and 2021 in Ghana.
Ghanaian traffickers who asked not to be named said that fees from sales of illegally exported rosewood are often paid to ministers.
The World’s Most Lucrative Crime
Such is the desire for rosewood that it’s the world’s most trafficked wild product —more than ivory, rhino horn, and pangolin scales combined. The United Nations ranks it as the world’s fourth most lucrative illicit business after narcotics, human trafficking, and the weapons trade. Almost all African rosewood demand comes from China.
Jerry Akanaanwie lives in Sandema, a town in Builsa in the Upper East Region of Ghana bordering Burkina Faso. His community’s forests were quickly depleted by continued rosewood logging. In one incident they caught loggers and brought them to West Sandema police station. According to Akanaanwie, the police seized the rosewood logs, but a few days later, the criminals were released. “We heard that they paid the police for the case to be resolved.”
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