Huge volumes of plywood, power poles, posts, columns, pulp, and paper manufactured and sold into global supply chains are now at risk after Nigeria—Africa’s timber engine room—introduced new reforms to curtail exports and halt processing to control illegal logging.
Nigeria is the continent’s largest timber producer (and exporter), with over 2,130,000 cubic metres of industrial roundwood produced in 2020. This includes huge volumes of mahogany, iroko, obeche, and African walnuts processed in the southern states of Ondo, Ogun, Edo, Delta, and Cross River.
The vast majority of this trade is traded directly into China, the United States, Germany, Indonesia, Finland, Poland, and Brazil – with Nigeria, one of Africa’s most vocal critics, opposing the European Union’s EUDR, which now threatens its enormous timber and coffee trade.
However, the decision to halt foreign exports could now put up to 6 million Nigerian jobs in danger (about 10% of the country’s labour force), further clogging an economy already bleeding from 40% plus inflation rates. That is according to Folorunsho Dada, the top legal adviser for the Processed Word Producers And Marketers Association (PROWPMAN) – the peak body for the country’s timber industry.
In a six-page letter addressed to the Chief of Staff to the President, Hon Femi Gbajabiamila, Mr Dada argues that “Nigeria cannot afford such a heavy blow given the current economic and social realities, including a 40% inflation rate.” Before adding that the financial benefits from processing and export “is conservatively put at US $500m.”
Nigeria’s decision to limit exports comes as Wood Central last week reported that Cameroon, one of Central Africa’s top outposts for timber exports, is declining. It comes as the Central African State Bank (or the BEAC) warned that the nation’s timber industry—which exports vast volumes of logs, sawn wood, plywood, and veneer to China and Vietnam is in trouble.
China’s stranglehold on Africa’s timber supply chain
Last year, Wood Central reported that 4.2 million tonnes of timber products (from 2012 to 2023) were traded into Asia (instead of Europe), with Nigeria one of the economies heavily connected to China’s Belt and Road Initiative – now responsible for more than 30% of the global trade in forest products.
In 2018, Nigeria became one of Africa’s first major economies to join the Belt and Road Initiative – which saw Chinese diplomats frame the first round of investments as part of a larger mission to support one of Africa’s most promising economies. By 2019, Nigeria hosted 70 construction companies, 40 investment houses and 30 trading brokers – with Chinese traders ramping up trade in plywood from Nigeria’s six major seaports.
According to Timber Exchange, Nigeria is now China’s third-largest plywood export market, with exports surging 72% to 291,000 cubic metres for the first half of 2023 – with half of this timber then on-shipped to 10 trading partners in the EU, North America and the Middle East.
- To learn more about China’s role in controlling the global supply chain for timber-based products, click on Wood Central’s special feature. And to learn more about the global challenges plywood producers face – especially hardwood manufacturers – to develop higher-value products to compete in the market, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
