Although many African countries harbour very valuable forest resources, the continent still imports huge volumes of timber products amounting to around US$4-billion annually. One of the explanations to this is the low capacity of the wood processing industry on the continent. Raw logs can be processed into primary, secondary and tertiary wood products for home consumption and export. This provides prospects for upgrading the exports of the primary wood raw materials to the export of secondary and tertiary processed products. Adding value to wood products in this way can lead to jobs and wealth creation in Africa.

This report provides results of the analysis of trade balances for four primary, three secondary and eight tertiary processed wood products in 12 selected West and Central African countries. Data on secondary wood processing was drawn from the ITTO Assessment of Trade database (2011-2020) and on tertiary processed wood products from FAOSTAT-Forestry over a period of ten years (2010 to 2019).

Report by AfDB