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Illegal logging is a growing feature of transnational organized crime in Africa. African countries are estimated to lose $17 billion each year to illegal logging. High-value timber species are in global demand, with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reporting that Africa’s share of rosewood exports to China rose from 40 percent in 2008 to 90 percent in 2018. These trends have wide-ranging security implications for African countries that supply rare hardwoods to global markets. For one thing, illegal logging has numerous negative environmental effects that weaken human security, especially in areas like the Congo Basin, where the forest is not only the world’s second-largest carbon sink but also an essential source of economic resilience and cultural significance. Secondly, timber trafficking done via the forest domain affects national security. Timber trafficking is a form of organized crime that constitutes a formidable security threat in and of itself. In some cases, it can also amplify other threats posed by organized criminal groups and feed into the ways that violent extremist organizations or other non-state armed groups finance themselves
Strategic and ethical leaders seeking solutions to effectively address timber trafficking have, on several occasions, sought to chart the way forward on this complex problem set during Africa Center for Strategic Studies programs. These “meetings of the minds” have produced an innovative agenda that alumni themselves have set: to strengthen national and regional information-sharing processes, platforms, and joint actions to enhance “forest domain awareness.” The future holds ample opportunities for the Africa Center community to operationalize the concept of forest domain awareness. There is also great potential for alumni to disrupt organized criminal activities by using insights from the information sharing that they foster.
What Is Forest Domain Awareness?
Forest domain awareness is conceptually similar to maritime domain awareness. The latter is defined as “a process that collects, fuses, and analyzes data about activities in, and the conditions of, the maritime environment and then disseminates the data gathered and analysis of results to decision makers.”[1] Forest domain awareness, therefore, involves creating and maintaining reliable mechanisms to share information about legal and illegal logging, as well as the actions that state and civil society actors take to respond to illegal logging. Making forest domain awareness work also involves determining who should systematically share what information and why.
Photo: Africa Center
A prerequisite for enhancing forest domain awareness is mapping the key stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities in countering timber trafficking. Typically, the military and gendarmerie contribute to countering illegal logging by providing logistical support, surveillance, and rapid response capabilities, especially in remote forested areas; the police by enforcing environmental laws, conducting investigations, apprehending offenders, and performing community outreach to raise awareness; the justice sector by prosecuting illegal logging cases, ensuring that offenders face appropriate penalties and that environmental laws are upheld; customs authorities by inspecting imports and exports of timber and enforcing trade regulations to prevent the trafficking of protected species; civil society by advocating for environmental protection, raising public awareness, and holding authorities accountable; and the forestry sector by monitoring forest health and sustainability, as well as implementing projects and policies that deter illegal logging. The question is how to synergize all these activities and ensure that they are supported in their implementation by an appropriate sharing of relevant practical information, both within and across countries.
How do Africa Center Alumni Think About Timber Trafficking and Forest Domain Awareness?
Practical ways forward for information sharing in the forest domain lie in the hands of the alumni community, which contains many thought leaders who are already working collaboratively to tackle these complex issues. At the Africa Center’s multinational program on strengthening security sector coordination to counter illegal logging – which was held in Libreville, Gabon in 2023 – participants drafted a solution framework that was notionally entitled, “Forest Domain Awareness Program, 2024-2030.” Based on peer learning and the candid sharing of ideas through the Africa Center platform, the draft framework included guidance to establish and strengthen online platforms or portals for forest information systems. This was conceived of as a way to enable the transparent monitoring of forests at the national and regional levels and the collection, management, and sharing of data and findings across sectors. The solution framework also contained a call to “increase the capacity of regional actors to conduct regular operations to deter, detain, and arrest criminal actors involved in illegal logging.” This has begun to occur through activities that include establishing mixed brigades between and within countries, creating specialized judicial institutions at the regional level, and training indigenous people and local communities as community guards and whistleblowers.
Photo: Africa Center
After these ideas were explored further at an Africa Center virtual reunion in 2024, a small group of experts was invited to meet for three days in Douala, Cameroon for a follow-up roundtable, entitled “Enhancing Forest Domain Awareness in Central Africa.” A mix of active Africa Center alumni and new members of the community attended. They represented Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Republic of Congo, Ghana, the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Central African Police Chiefs Committee (CAPCCO), the Central African Forests Commission (COMIFAC), the Action Group Against Anti-Money Laundering in Central Africa (GABAC), and Interpol. The proceedings included a mix of plenary sessions on specialized themes, interactive demonstrations of national and regional databases that are known for contributing to forest domain awareness, and an intensive half-day field site visit to the Timber Park and related offices and agencies working in the Autonomous Port of Douala. Together, the experts developed concrete recommendations to advance information sharing, as well as to strengthen data collection, processing, and analysis to counter timber trafficking.
Promising Tools
Several types of databases and platforms in Central Africa are already designed to facilitate the collection and analysis of data about the forest domain. During several in-depth “database demonstration sessions,” the roundtable experts took an inside look at several of them. These databases and platforms have complementary features, but not all of them are yet comprehensively known by or fully accessible to the range of security, justice, customs, forestry, and civil society actors who work together to counter timber trafficking. Spreading the word about the databases within the Africa Center alumni network is an important way to contribute to solutions. Thanks to the recent roundtable in Douala, the operators of these platforms are now members of the alumni network who can help us all understand and pursue the pathways to information access.
Launched in 2016, the Africa-TWIX platform seeks to promote information exchange among law enforcement agencies to combat wildlife trafficking and illegal logging regionally. It has been a valuable tool for implementing the COMIFAC Plan for Strengthening the Enforcement of National Wildlife Legislation (PAPECALF). It is accessible to stakeholders who are committed to sharing confidential information about timber trafficking in the region. The seizures database and the mailing list for Africa-TWIX provide two interlocking tools to foster effective communication and coordination. Actors from the police, gendarmerie, judiciary, forestry services, and other national entities enforcing the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) convention – along with select regional and international organizations – are the prime users of the database. Security, judicial, forestry, and civil society actors can exchange real-time information that could facilitate nimble, multi-sectoral responses to counter timber trafficking and a wider range of activities adjacent to illegal logging and associated trades.
The Central Africa Forest Observatory (OFAC) database is a regional platform that tracks many aspects of the state of forest ecosystems. It also tracks the COMIFAC member states’ legal and policy frameworks for governing the forest and countering illicit exploitation of them. As the scientific and technical branch of the COMIFAC, OFAC maintains a database that culls information from the regional, national, and local level. It traces key features of the forest domain that allow policymakers to understand forest governance dynamics, identify possible challenges to human security and resilience to climate change in the forest domain, and track the progress of projects being implemented as part of the COMIFAC’s Convergence Plan. Several axes of the Convergence Plan depend upon the security sector coordinating with forestry, justice, and civil society actors to counter timber trafficking. In relation to this, the database tracks the percentage of protected areas that have ecoguards by country. It also serves as a repository of forest-related legal and policy documents. OFAC experts provide analysis that could be useful to security sector officials in multiple resources that analyze data from the OFAC platform, including the State of the Forests report, policy briefs, and other publications that are intended to inform high-level decision-making.
Photo: Africa Center
Certain regional databases containing relevant information to counter timber trafficking also have decentralized, national-level components. For example, Interpol maintains 19 databases that police can consult at their country’s National Central Bureau at any time during their investigations related to illegal logging and associated trade. I-24/7, Interpol’s global police communications system, enables such access. The information is provided on a voluntary basis, which is, according to Interpol’s website, “subject to a strict legal framework and data protection rules in order to foster trust and ensure the quality of the information.” Expanding the types of government officials who can access this system, within the realm of what is legally possible, could further push the frontiers of information sharing to counter illegal logging.
National timber traceability systems also play a vital role in curbing illegal logging, promoting legal timber trade, and supporting sustainable forest management. At the Africa Center roundtable, experts had the chance to examine Ghana’s Wood Tracking Database in depth and discuss their countries’ equivalent systems. They exist in Cameroon (the Computerized Forest Information Management System, SIGIF II), Central African Republic (Legality Assurance System, LAS), Democratic Republic of Congo (Timber Traceability and Legality Management Platform, TRABOIS), Gabon (Forestry and Timber Execution Agency database, SMINTEF), and the Republic of Congo (Computerized Public Timber Traceability System, SIVL). Many have done so under the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance, and Trade initiative supported by the European Union. Some of these national timber traceability systems are inter-operable with other national databases that customs officials use to collaborate with forestry authorities to track timber from its harvest on the forest floor all the way to its export. There has been varied progress in implementation overall, but Ghana’s system has historically stood out as a useful case study in adaptation and innovation.
How to Keep Moving the Needle
There are many national and regional projects that can integrate information-sharing tools into their existing plans to counter illegal logging in new ways. Integrating these information-sharing tools will, of course, also require developing and implementing procedures that specify the conditions under which sharing occurs and the ways that information-sharing tools can be used by various actors who need to coordinate their actions. There is, furthermore, a need to develop more formally structured, consistent, and reliable communications mechanisms between the government officials who counter timber trafficking and the members and leaders of forest communities, including traditional leaders, who often serve as guardians of the forest.
In other words, significant strategy, diplomacy, and commitment to inter-agency and state-society coordination within countries may be in store to establish these procedures – especially since a mix of military and civilian institutions will be involved. Such efforts will depend upon “coalitions for innovation” that form on a national level in the various countries grappling with these issues. Africa Center alumni focused on the forest domain bring many leadership experiences, technical skills, and diplomatic talents to the current context that could be catalytic.
Forming a “community of practice” to support peers as they navigate the ups and downs of innovation can help us all learn from each other’s efforts to catalyze strategic solutions to timber trafficking to periodically refine the solution framework that Africa Center alumni have in mind. The national and regional initiatives that could be leveraged to enhance information sharing about the forest domain are legion.
To highlight just one example on the regional level, CAPPCO is working with Interpol in the member states of the Central African Monetary Community (CEMAC) to establish “mixed brigades” of gendarmes, police, ecoguards, customs agents, and other officials to counter organized crime in priority border areas in 2025. In tandem, the Regional Bureau of Interpol is working to form National Environmental Security Task Forces (NESTs) in each Central African country to facilitate access to the organization’s 19 different crime databases, some of which cover the forest domain. The roundtable participants discussed whether, as each country forms its National Environmental Security Task Forces for Interpol, those groupings could become part of the CAPPCO’s Mixed Brigade coordination committees to further harmonize efforts.
Photo: Africa Center
Both of these efforts could also serve as “multipliers” of COMIFAC’s implementation of its convergence plan, the work that ECCAS is doing through its commission on environment and rural development, and the interventions of OCFSA has done to address poaching issues adjacent to timber trafficking in the TRIDOM area.
There are similar developments within countries that forest domain awareness efforts could amplify:
- Cameroon has a Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Forests and Wildlife that has fostered coordination to counter illegal logging. National stakeholders also recently completed a revision of the forestry and wildlife laws to increase penalties for related crimes, facilitate more sustainable environmental governance, and account for forest communities’ rights.
- Central African Republic has recently established mobile forestry brigades, which are structured to work with the Armed Forces of Central African Republic (FACA), courts, and civil society groups that monitor forest governance.
- The Democratic Republic of Congo held an “Etats Generaux des Forets” that examined the current state of application of the laws and policies, including in domains related to illegal logging, like timber traceability and forest policy development. One possible next step is developing a requisite forestry strategy.
- Gabon has had special courts in place for several years to apply laws to counter illegal logging, and their functioning depends on security sector coordination with the judiciary through the chain of custody.
- Republic of Congo convenes a formally mandated multi-actor working group that works across relevant ministries, departments, and agencies to conduct community audits of forest concessions to counter timber trafficking.
The Africa Center hopes to continue serving as a hub of candid, strategic thinking and exchange for alumni who are working tirelessly on countering organized crimes like timber trafficking and who are interested in enhancing forest domain awareness.
For further information on the Africa Center’s work on countering transnational organized crime, please contact Dr. Catherine Lena Kelly.
[1] Nimmich, J. & Goward, D. Maritime domain awareness: The key to maritime security, in Michael Carsten, ed. Global Legal Challenges: Command of the Commons, Strategic Communications, and Natural Disasters, International Law Studies 83, p. 63.