Cameroon has moved to enforce a five-year-old ministerial order requiring all timber used in public contracts to come from legal, traceable sources, targeting a state-procurement market that consumes approximately 13,000 cubic metres of wood each year and is currently supplied largely through channels that drain tax revenue and accelerate forest loss.
That is according to the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF), which convened heads of procurement at a Yaounde workshop chaired by Technical Adviser Landry Ngono Tsimi on behalf of Forestry Minister Jules Doret Ndongo.
Wood Central understands the order in question is Joint Order No. 0162/MINFOF/MINTP/MINMAP, signed on 15 December 2020 by the ministries of forestry, public works and public contracts, and that the Yaounde session is the latest in a national rollout that began with a launch on 10 September 2025 and continued through regional workshops between October 2025 and January 2026.
Director of Promotion and Transformation of Forestry Products at MINFOF, Dr Tadoum Martin, told the workshop that the public procurement timber stream had become a fiscal and environmental problem. He laid out the financial and ecological costs in stark terms.
“The public sector consumes approximately 13,000 cubic metres of wood per year. The supply used is of dubious origin, which means there is not only a loss of tax revenues for the state, but also an impact on the forest in terms of deforestation and degradation,” Dr Tadoum said.
The 13,000-cubic-metre figure, drawn from data compiled by MINFOF and the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), represents wood consumed annually through public infrastructure and construction contracts. Officials acknowledge that a substantial portion of that supply is currently sourced outside formal, taxed channels, depriving the treasury of receipts that would otherwise accrue from legally documented timber transactions.
The five-year delay between signature and enforcement reflects an inconsistent rollout across the public sector since the order entered into force in December 2020, with implementation only beginning in earnest with the September 2025 national launch. Ngono Tsimi acknowledged the gap and said the workshop programme had been built to close it.
“This is the continuation of a process aimed at combating illegal logging and promoting the domestic market for wood from legal sources. The use of legally sourced wood in public procurement sends a clear signal of the state’s determination to maximise tax revenues and consolidate the forestry sector as one of the levers of economic growth,” Ngono Tsimi said.
Compliance is being supported by the operationalisation of SIGIF2, the second-generation Forestry Information Management System designed to track legality and traceability of timber across the supply chain, alongside the expansion of Cameroon’s Domestic Timber Market through new sites across the country. Ngono Tsimi told participants that legal timber in public contracts must become an operational reality rather than a policy aspiration.
A further dimension to the compliance problem was outlined by Research Officer at the Ministry of Public Contracts, Doh Ferdinand, who said many officials responsible for awarding state contracts had been unaware that the joint order existed at all. He told the workshop that ignorance of the law was no excuse and that enforcement would now move beyond awareness-raising into active implementation across all ministries.
“Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. We are here to sensitise and inform the chiefs of services in ministries concerning the award of contracts, so that they take care to use legal wood in the execution of those contracts. The Cameroon government has signed many international conventions and has been working hard to manage its forests,” Doh said.
Cameroon’s forestry sector ranks second only to oil in foreign exchange earnings, and MINFOF told the Yaounde workshop that routing the full 13,000 cubic metres of annual public-procurement timber through legal, taxed channels would protect the forest estate and lift treasury receipts in a single move — the outcome the joint order has been awaiting since its December 2020 signature.
