Forestry in the Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges & Opportunities

Consider this: in Africa, more than 70 percent of the population depends on forests and woodlands for its livelihood; one fifth of rural families’ daily needs come from forests. Woodlands and forests supply approximately 60 percent of all energy. Forest-related activities accounts for a large part of the GDP of most of the continent’s countries. And, Africa is home to 25 percent of the world’s remaining rainforests.

Despite significant international financial support to the forestry sector in the Sub-Saharan African countries, impacts on sustainable management and poverty alleviation are still below expectations.

PROFOR, in collaboration with the World Bank’s Africa region, is helping to meet the need for a more comprehensive approach to tackling forest-related challenges and proposing more appropriate solutions. The activity hopes to help countries better incorporate forestry issues into overall development policy, identify the priority actions to do so, and help donors/partners who support development and forestry in Africa coordinate and finance more strategically.

PROFOR funding will support:

• A review of forestry documentation on Sub-Saharan Africa
• Identification of challenges and issues in sub-regions, with an emphasis on obtaining lessons from past successes or failures
• Identification of recommended options with an Action Plan; roles and responsibilities; partners and if possible indications of required financing
• Coordination amongst development partners (multilateral and bilateral) to then determine who has a comparative advantage in operationalizing the identified options.