Importance and trade of the Wood in the 21st Century in Africa

Abstract

Wood is hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. This paper focuses on some of the challenges of the forests products trade in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to bring out the analysis we would like to make. The existing informations on the forest exploitation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, based mainly on the bibliographic review were considered. These data are time-series data of secondary source in the range of 2000 to 2015. According to the actual estimations, the population of the DR Congo consumes about 45 million m3 of wood per year. This estimation concerns the industrial wood exploitation, the fire wood, services wood, medicinal wood, house constructions, peasant’s fields, etc. Wood can be used as fuel, construction, sports and art material, furniture and utensils. The roundwood is the most exported forest product in the Central Africa for the international trade. Gabon is the first roundwood producing country in the Central with about 53% of the production. Wood and its sub-products have a great importance through the world. International trade in forest products particularly the wood can involve producing forest products, such as paper, in one country, sourcing timber from another country to meet production demand and then exporting the finished products to others countries. Keywords: Wood, forest, product