Corruption and the destruction of Africa’s forests
The economy of most African countries depends on massive exportation of raw materials, usually controlled by large foreign companies. The exploitation of the local resources such as wood never seems to stop, even if massive deforestation in countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia and other parts of Africa is bound to have catastrophic economic and environmental consequences. One may be compelled to ask: Who are the main players behind the progressive loss of forested areas in Africa? How much is corruption responsible for this devastation?
The Western world’s hunger for African resources, including land, has only grown more intense due to the increased demand for carbon and biofuels. The whole continent becomes more dependent on overseas trade day after day. Internal trade between African countries is extremely weak and most of these countries are large importers of pricey finished goods and services provided by other global partners. Most African countries are exporters of raw materials that generate profit margins that are quite small on their own and are made even smaller by the fact that most of the lands where these goods are produced rest in the hands of large transnational companies. In many African countries, the laws that regulate land leases have been extremely generous to foreign investors. The land is leased for negligible rents, especially in remote and sparsely populated areas and the approval process for investment proposals is superficial at best. In exchange for an alleged economic return that in many cases never follows, national governments usually exempt foreign companies from repatriated profits on taxes and taxes on imports of capital goods. All these land grabs are notoriously unjust to the original inhabitants of these lands.
The rural population has been marginalised even further and local labour is often hired only on a seasonal basis, leaving very little opportunities for the professional and economic growth of all these vulnerable households. Knowledge is kept in the hands of the Western professionals and their investments on ameliorating the infrastructure are too minuscule to represent a valid trade-off. This non-inclusive model largely depends on the constant flow of capital, which necessarily come from foreign investors, creating an unbreakable cycle of dependency. Technology-based land exploitation has caused the environment to be degraded and has substituted traditional sustainable and labour-intensive agriculture with intensive use of fossil fuels, pesticides and widespread deforestation. The loss of biodiversity of large-scale monocultures and the destruction of large forested areas weakened the ecosystems against unexpected weather changes and other natural disasters.
The constant demand for crop and grazing land as well as wood for fuel and construction, have a tremendous impact on soil conservation and weather management. Deforestation, in particular, is one of those problems that, if left unchecked, may cause a planetary disaster. Africa’s tropical rainforests include the Guinean forests of West Africa and the Congo Basin, which comprise the second-largest forest cover in the world. However, according to Professor Abraham Baffoe, this immense “world’s set of lungs” is rapidly disappearing. Losing forests has devastating effects on the indigenous population, the local ecosystem and the global environment as well.
An estimated 100 million African people rely on forests for support and finding freshwater, food, shelter and clothing. Forests support biodiversity as well and many plants and animals only exist in these regions. Without forests, many animal species such as chimpanzees, are endangered since they can’t survive without their habitat and entire towns are at the risk of rainforest flooding.
Corruption has a tremendous impact on global deforestation. With 13 million hectares lost each year, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has identified the illegal timber trade as one of the principal causes of forest loss. The estimated value of illegal forest activities accounts for more than 10% of the value of worldwide trade in wood products and corruption in the forest sector may increase the cost of forestry activities by about 20%.
Most countries in Central and Western Africa that are particularly rich in forests and other resources score particularly low on the Corruption Perceptions Index, a global index of public sector corruption established by Transparency International. Without a transparent and democratic administration whose framework is built on solid ethical principles, the land rights of local African communities and marginalised groups are constantly violated.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, one citizen in two had to pay a bribe to obtain a land service such as registering land for his household. The forest sector is especially vulnerable to grand and petty corruption activities. Government officials often collude with powerful European, American, or Asian companies since they offer forest as a highly valuable commodity in exchange for power and money. Many indigenous populations in Africa have no access to information and justice, cannot claim their rights and have no chance but to bend the knee when land grabbing laws are enforced by corrupt governments. Foreign companies know how easy it is to violate national regulations and often do so with total impunity knowing that punishment would probably be very light. Funds generated from the profit of the forests are usually embezzled or siphoned out of the continent to be laundered through complex schemes of multi-layered shell offshore businesses. Money that could be invested in social services, jobs and better infrastructure ends up being devoured by greedy officials, money-hungry corporations and shady smugglers. The core problems, corruption, grossly uneven distribution of power among players, and poorly-designed regulations are not addressed at all. The handful of trees that get planted only help these parasites to get more wood to harvest in due time. It can also be argued that many of these brave steps toward sustainability are nothing but green rhetoric spin for Western audiences.
In conclusion one can safely argue that when the rules are made by those who dominate the markets, globalisation becomes a source of profound inequalities. The blatant asymmetry in bargaining power between the global superpowers and the global South has all but abolished the few safety nets that national laws could provide. All the regions that are rich in resources and commodities are quickly transformed into no man’s lands where the indigenous populations in Africa become unwanted guests to be displaced. Entire ecosystems are ravaged and exploited, no matter the consequences.
And when newer, fairer rules are established by a more ethical administration, they are rapidly dismantled by leveraging corruption and bribes. The word “development” has been mentioned so many times that it is now empty and meaningless. Nonetheless, the only way to shift toward a more sustainable economic system is to focus on the real development of African countries. Reforestation is just palliative therapy that is trying to heal some of the wounds of an already terminally ill patient. Africa can flourish only through a more radical approach that allows Africans to grow, develop and fully exploit the immense value of their enormous resources instead of leaving them in the hands of foreigners and global corporations.