Wood is everywhere: we use it for the beams of our houses, to manufacture windows, chairs and paper. Even for the charcoal we use for a BBQ. It would be difficult to live without it. And it supports many sectors: forest concessions, sawmills, paper industries and many others.

Many of us believe that if we cut down trees, we are basically deforesting. But this is WRONG.

In this episode, we give you some information about the EU deforestation-free regulation and its implementation in Africa and we explain how forests can be sustainably managed. It is key to understand that the EU is generally not the main buyer of African timber/wood products, but Asia often accounts for 70% of African exports of logs or wood products.

We provide some elements on forests in Central Africa, where the Congo basin constitutes the 2nd green lung of the planet after the Amazon. Gabon and Congo Brazzaville are more advanced than other on sustainability commitments and the tropical forests face many challenges - corruption, conflicts, illegal logging etc.-

We also analyse the timber sector in West Africa, and later on, we see how South Africa is really unique : most of the forests are plantations (eucalyptus, pine, etc.) and the country has a solid pulp & paper industry. And finally Namibia faces a huge ecological challenge with the "bush encroachment" phenomenon, and succeeds to be the main African exporter of charcoal to the EU.

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