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Chinese Companies Engage in Massive “Forest Looting” in the DR Congo

Two Chinese logging companies are now the largest timber harvesters in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with concessions sized at more than 3 million hectares. The firms, Wan Peng and Booming Green, are engaged in industrial-scale logging to export raw ...

Illegal Chinese Timber Trade Fuels Insurgency in Mozambique

Officially, Mozambique bans the export of raw timber in an effort to protect what's left of the country's rapidly shrinking forests. But whatever laws are in place are largely disregarded as more than 500,000 tons of timber leave the country each ...

Guarding West Africa’s Forests: Exploring Ways to Put an End to Illegal Chinese Timber Trade

Together, the United States and China import $40 billion worth of timber products each year, quite a bit of which is harvested illegally from West Africa's rapidly shrinking forests. But cracking down on this illicit trade is extremely difficult given that ...

How Illegal African Timber Ends Up in Home Depot

At least 1.2 million doors sold to U.S. consumers between 2017 and 2022 at the massive home improvement chain Home Depot came from threatened forests in Equatorial Guinea via China. This is the finding of a new Environmental Investigation Agency report on the trade in okoume, a kind ...

Investigation: High-Level Corruption in Zambia Fuels Illegal Timber Trade with China

The Environmental Investigation Agency published a damning report last week that alleged Zambian President Edgar Lungu, his daughter and several high-ranking ministers are all allegedly involved in the illicit trade of rare mukula wood. Mukula is a rare African tree and one of the rosewood species protected under ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

2026: Africa-China Relations in a World Shaped by North-South Geopolitics

When talking about Africa–China relations, one is always moving along a sliding scale. There are myriad interactions with Chinese entities that concern only individual African countries, segueing into trends affecting the whole continent and sliding further into global dynamics shaping the developing world, of which Africa is the heart.

The Africa-China relationship is its own thing, but Africa’s fate can’t easily be separated from factors affecting the wider Global South, ...

Gabon Takes Action Against Chinese Logging Company Following Damning Report

The Gabon government has suspended the logging license at two sites run by a large, privately-owned Chinese logging company that allegedly engaged in widespread illegal activities, according to a report by Agence France Presse. The Dejia Group was singled out last month in ...

Report: Chinese Diplomats & Officials Tied To Ivory Trade in Africa

A recent report by the UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) alleges Chinese diplomats and officials are directly involved in the ivory trade in Africa. Most damaging, the EIA reports that even some members of visiting Chinese president Xi Jinxing's delegation smuggled dozens of kilos ...