How Congo’s trees are smuggled through East Africa

Part one:

Timber hustling: Lia, a thriving hub for Congolese mahogany trafficked to Uganda, Kenya.

As the sun goes down in late January 2024, the rural border point of Lia situated along the Uganda-Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) frontier bustles with activity. Two trucks are unloading freshly sawn hardwood timber as a few people milling around watch attentively. Just metres away, another two trucks are being loaded with wood while three others are parked on the roadside waiting for timber.
Flourishing business.

Business is booming in Lia as wood is moved from one point to another, changing hands from buyer to seller. Every day, around three dozen timber dealers and casual labourers criss-cross this border point, which has become the main area of timber coming into Uganda. Piles of planks stretch 300m all around the area.

The hustle and bustle on the Uganda border feeds the high demand for quality wood in Uganda and beyond.

“Why Congo timber? It’s nice. You have to give it to them, Congo is a blessed country with a rainforest and everything. Their logs are mature, not like the ones in Uganda,” says Footsteps Furniture marketing executive Frank Nsubuga, who serves high-profile customers and government offices in Kampala, Uganda.

The mahogany family Meliaceae includes five species of African mahogany (Khaya genus) that are on the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) protected list. As the raw wood crosses through Lia’s official border and travels to Uganda’s capital, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania, it is not subject to scrutiny.

This seemingly ‘normal’ work setting hides a seamier side of the timber industry – one that involves miscategorised wood … and a lot of money.

Interviews with traders in situ, officials and those behind the scenes, indicate that this is also a dangerous business. Most people The Africa Report spoke to in Lia requested anonymity for fear of their safety. Numerous sources discussed their part in the operation, but are not quoted.

Coupled with satellite imagery, our four-part series reveals how the illegal logging supply chain is so lucrative that those involved are willing to break the law and relocate to profit from this precious resource.

Timber station destination

Lia is a rural community, with a mixture of iron-sheet roofed and grass-thatched houses dotted across the village’s marram road leading to the border point. This hamlet is growing, fuelled by the timber trade, a change clearly visible in satellite images.

Timber used to pass through another border point, Mpondwe, located about 450km south of Lia. The establishment of a road to Mpondwe of a new timber park, the first of its kind in the DRC, pushed traders northwards to Lia from 2019 onwards.

A large timber station opened in Lia in 2022, bringing in more money, traffic, people and cut wood, as evident in the images.

Timber dealers mention several provinces – North Kivu, Ituri, Tshopo and Haut-Uele – as the source of timber that arrives at the Uganda border. In Ituri, they spoke of Nia Nia, a hamlet located in Okapi Wildlife Reserve, a rich tropical rainforest. It is situated to the extreme west, where Ituri borders Tshopo and Haut-Uele. Despite the huge volumes of timber at Lia, there is little presence of authorities.
The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) office in charge of clearing goods passing through Lia is staffed with two people. Across the border on the Congo side in the Ituri region, there is a one-room office occupied by a few Congolese officials.

There are no scanners or weighing scales in Lia to check or weigh timber arriving or departing in trucks.
On the ground.

In August last year, The Africa Report visited Lia and spoke to numerous people who explained how the logging business works. According to a local politician, as many as 10 trucks per day arrive from the DRC, depending on the season.

The timber is unloaded, and money is exchanged. If the wood quality is not good enough, the driver has to go back to the DRC to bring more timber while the buyer waits for their full load, which could be up to two weeks.

Lia doesn’t operate like other borders where trucks or people pass through to their destination. It’s a stopping place for some, working as a timber exchange point and market of sorts. Uganda and Kenya timber buyers – always stationed at the border – with money and dependable connections in the DRC contract their Congolese counterparts to source timber, according to a person who works in Lia.

The buyers partially pay in advance for the raw materials and sometimes buy wood harvesting machines for their Congolese partners who go to the forests to cut trees, especially during the rainy season.
The cut wood is later transported to the border during the dry season because movement is easier. It can take as long as six months for timber to be delivered. Once it is received, the pieces are counted and confirmed to be of the right quality, and the buyer pays the remaining balance, according to one wood dealer.

French disconnection

About 80% of the timber that arrives at Lia is en route, mostly to Kenya, explained a person working at the border, saying Uganda officials merely facilitate its movement. The small portion of timber destined for the local market is cleared, taxed and transported to Kampala.

Ugandan officials “don’t care about taxes on materials being exported”, our source said, so “they don’t bother looking at the documents” because Uganda is only for transit.

While more than 200 languages are spoken in the DRC, French is one of the primary four official languages. But Congolese who bring timber to the border come with “tricky” and “not serious” documents written in French, according to one person who asked not to be identified.

“It’s very rare to find that they have the documents the way you want them 100%,” the source said. “We end up initiating documents from here.”

Another person working in the wood industry at the border explained that timber arrives without the requisite documents due to corruption in the DRC.

In Haut-Uele, traders mention Isiro, Rungu and Dungu as areas where they source wood. In June 2023, DRC forest monitoring group Observatoire de la Gouvernance Forestière (OGF) organised a fact-finding mission to Haut-Uele, where it found that the province had not issued logging permits to artisanal operators for two years despite receiving more than 80 applications, yet artisanal operators were logging without permits, including in forest reserves.

The OGF report said it “encountered a truck loading a batch of sawn timber for export to Uganda” and that “all this wood was cut without authorisation”.

In the eastern Congo, money for permits is paid to individuals and roadblock operators rather than government offices, which explains the discrepancy in documents and stamps that truckers have at the border.

“Sometimes people receive money stamps on receipts and let trucks pass through. People arrive with stamped receipts and no other documents,” says the wood industry worker.

People involved in illegal logging take home triple the income of what legal logging pays in the DRC, says Moise Mugaruka Kajiwami, the head of the Forest Management Bureau in North Kivu.

“Most of it is in the hands of armed men, then operators who abandon it and join the rebels. The latter work to increase the Ugandan economy to the disadvantage of that of the DRC,” says Kajiwami.

No permit? No problem

What is always missing, according to Lia timber clearing agent Rashid Kabuye, is the certificate of origin, because the administrative state is centralised in the DRC.

“For a person to get [the certificate], he has to go to Kinshasa, which is very far, and you have to fly as there are no roads,” he says. The Congolese capital is around 1,700km from the Ituri region.
Essylot Lubala, technical advisor of the OGF, says the excuse that dealers can’t go to Kinshasa to obtain a certificate of origin should not be accepted in Uganda.

“If there is no certificate of origin, timber should not be allowed to enter Uganda, or East Africa territory,” he says. If wood without a certificate is blocked, the owners will be forced to go to Kinshasa to acquire it. “It’s through the acquisition of the document that legal compliance and tax obligations will be met.”
Although an agreement for the regulation of logging in the provinces of Ituri, Tsopo and North Kivu was signed last year in Bunia, the process is moot without enforcement, Kajiwami said.

The overall lack of infrastructure also hampers paperwork and operations.

“The offices around here have no computers, no electricity – they are still using pen and paper,” he adds.
One Congolese trucker who has ferried timber and asked not to be identified, candidly tells The Africa Report that logging is an “atrocious” job, but that corruption is part of his daily life as he moves timber across the border.

Because we can’t check, we have to bribe

Before reaching the Uganda border, the truck will have paid about $230 on checkpoints, he says. “These are amounts with no receipts,” he adds.

“If you don’t accept corruption, you have to provide genuine verification [of wood] and that’s different,” he says, indicating that a document showing a 20-tonne load may be for a load of 60 tonnes. “But that’s how we eat.”

If truckers are given documents that indicate they have a 3-5 tonne load, they have no way of verifying it before they hit the road – and the border check.

“Because we can’t check, we have to bribe. Even with the … [right] documents there might be an extra five tonnes for him, for his pocket, so he will let them go,” adds the trucker. “That’s how it works.”
Researchers published a study of the park on the road leading to Mpondwe, which indicated a near-total failure to issue formal timber certification on the DRC side.

“Some 93% of what arrived at the Congo park had no legal logging permits,” Paul Omar Cerutti, head of the DRC office at the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and the study’s co-author tells The Africa Report.

This is how we do it here

There is another group of Congolese traders who bring timber to Lia without a prior arrangement with buyers. They either sell it quickly or wait for days until they secure a buyer. As a result, the border has become a marketplace.

URA spokesperson Ibrahim Bbosa tells The Africa Report that the practice of traders waiting at the border for their Congolese counterparts to deliver raw material is acceptable as long as the timber is cleared by the customs officials.

However, he also said trade in timber at the border, which is booming in Lia, is not permissible under the law.

Besides traders significantly under-declaring their raw material tonnage to cheat taxes, bribery also aids the movement of timber trucks loaded at checkpoints and weighbridges en route to Kampala or Kenya.
A Ugandan timber trader who showed his tax papers to The Africa Report just days after collecting timber from Lia had roughly paid only 20% of the tax he should have been charged.

Why traders moved to Lia

Depending on who you speak to, there are several reasons why traders stopped using the Mpondwe border, but danger coupled with the restive area certainly comes into play.

Traders are like pastoralists Nathan Biryomumaisho, a wood dealer, said the move was due to insecurity, while Lia clearing agent Kabuye said fighting in the North Kivu region pushed wood dealers to source wood in other areas.

“Rebels were hiding in the forests where these guys were getting timber,” says Kabuye.

“Wherever rebels found them, they would attack and kill them. They [loggers] diverted to other forests where there is no insecurity and those forests are closer to the northern routes,” he adds. Rashid Muhindo, a clearing agent who moved to northern Uganda, agrees. “Rebels were burning trucks and people were losing lives,” he says.

However, Ngasu Jackson Bwambale, a forest ranger in charge of the area around Mpondwe, says traders felt they were being overtaxed.

“Traders are like pastoralists. They transferred their trade from Mpondwe to Lia … and established another timber entry route,” he says. “They shifted due to high taxes.” But taxes on timber are uniform across all borders, so they found a place where documents were not a key requirement.

In Kampala, government officials don’t dispute what The Africa Report investigation reveals but argue that it is difficult to authenticate products that come from eastern DRC, which has been at war for decades resulting in weak administration.

Bbosa says contraband that crosses the Uganda-DRC border is due to the lack of control posts.
“What is still a problem and is difficult to account for is timber that could come in through our porous borders,” he says.

You’re raising an issue which is going to amount to a serious investigation
The ease with which traders turned Lia into a market without checks and easy bribes has made the hamlet a hub for traders.

Less than 30km south of Lia is the Vurra border, the second-largest and most-developed border, with everything that a smooth, legal timber trade requires. It is not used by timber traders.

When told about the outcome of the 2023 CIFOR-ICRAF study analysing the park near Mpondwe, Bbosa is surprised. “I think it’s good information for us to act on,” he says. “We as tax administrators can act on such information. If there is a loophole that needs to be closed, that would be an interesting trigger.”

Bob Kazungu, Uganda’s acting assistant commissioner for forestry at the Ministry for Water and Environment, says in the past they used to get forged documents which they were able to deal with but ruled out the scenario of timber passing through official borders without any documentation.

His office hadn’t heard of this lack of papers “because if it had, we would have swung into serious action,” he says. “You’re raising an issue which is going to amount to a serious investigation.”
Yet other studies, including a Chatham House document from 2014, show that 87% of logging in the DRC was illegal.

Lia timber trade welcomed by locals

When the illegal wood route moved to Lia, the money followed. The rural community has welcomed strangers over the past two years – timber dealers. The community is excited by the trade boom, but has a few reservations, according to Ariko Moses, a councillor representing the Arua city council, the area under which Lia is located.

In mid-2023, new timber dealers were arriving in the area from Kasese, Uganda, Moses told The Africa Report in August. Their arrival raised security concerns because some rebel groups operate along the DRC border in Kasese, he said.

“People from Kasese, the number increased this year … we asked the security to investigate them … there are people who are loading [raw wood], there are people who are counting timber going out,” he said. “We discovered together with security that they are genuine businesspeople, and they have work permits,” he added.

Local politicians, Moses said, are happy with the boom in timber entering Uganda through Lia. “It’s aiding the community to develop and is a source of revenue: dealers are renting spaces where they keep their raw material as well as houses.”

Most importantly, it has been a source of jobs for youth who load and unload timber on trucks or guard timber stockpiles. The city administration is planning to tax the timber dealers so that it can generate revenue, Moses said, but admits they will be cautious.

“We want to collect our taxes from them … we want a moderate [tax] rate. We don’t want to overtax them, you know, taxes can also chase people. Once we chase them, it will have many implications,” he said.
“If we chase them because of tax, the voters will turn against us. We don’t want to collapse the business,” he added.

Besides these two types of illicit timber cross-border movement – with suspect documents or no documents at all – a third type of wood hustling, as detailed in part two of our four-part series, is smuggling.

Part two:

‘Big men’, an ugly history, and the ruthless Congo Basin timber smuggling business

The 950km Uganda-DRC border is dotted with many natural features, from Bwindi Impenetrable National Park gorilla sanctuary and Lake Edward in southwestern Uganda to the Semliki River, Rwenzori Mountains and Lake Albert in midwestern Uganda. Past Lake Albert, the border curls twice into the largely flat terrain of northern Uganda.

The meandering roads along the border are used to smuggle contraband, including timber from the Congo Basin – also known as the lungs of Africa.

As early as 7pm, motorcycles can be seen on the bumpy marram roads, moving at breakneck speeds, ferrying jerrycans of petrol and boxes of cigarettes into Uganda.

Timber smuggler’s paradise

Raw wood without documentation is smuggled openly in Lia and along 160km around the village. The illegal entry points are not hidden in heavily forested areas but occur in small settlements that are often not far from official borders.

The smugglers are facilitated by people who live in communities on both sides of the border; these people only engage in conversation after being introduced by someone they know. The Africa Report spoke to two ‘facilitators’.

A man who has been part of the timber smuggling scheme through an illegal entry point located 12km south of Lia said that because timber pieces are hard to move across the border, the wood is first dropped close to the border point and then moved into Uganda at night.

About 100km south of Lia, less than 2km from the Padea official border point in the Zombo district, a person who facilitates the movement of Congolese timber – hardwood and softwood – into Uganda told The Africa Report that he connects Ugandan timber buyers with dealers on the DRC side. The dealers prepare the requested timber which is then moved into Uganda during the night on bicycles and motorcycles, depending on the volume.

He explains that softwood, the most smuggled timber – usually eucalyptus and pine – is cheap, quick to find and easy to move across the border. However, some clients want hardwood, such as African mahogany, an endangered species. Those who facilitate smuggling wood across the border ensure it is stored in the agreed place and are paid depending on the volume and distance across the borders.

Ibrahim Bbosa, spokesperson of Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) tells The Africa Report they have “heard information from other [government] agencies that have been able to find consolidation points where people ferry in small bits of timber, consolidate and then initiate trade”.

Checkpoints to roadblocks

From the informal Lia timber park on the border of DRC and other consolidation points, timber is loaded onto closed-body trucks that transport it 450km to Kampala, Uganda’s capital.

This timber will either be without any documents or will have been cleared with fake documents. It will also likely be an overloaded truck with under-declared wood – yet it must pass roadblocks and a weighbridge. Traders fix both problems with cash and saying “it’s for my boss”.

Trucks are allowed to carry a maximum of 30 tonnes, but one trader says they load as much as possible.
Roadblocks – permanent or temporary – are manned by various security agencies such as the army, police, URA law enforcement, the National Forestry Authority and environmental police.

The first permanent roadblock en route to Kampala is monitored by URA staff, environmental police and the army and is some 109km from Arua in the West Nile region. The second is 237km from Arua, while the weighbridge is located 60km from Kampala.

There are also several semi-permanent police checkpoints along the road. An environmental police officer who used to work at a checkpoint said timber trucks arrive with clearance papers obtained from the entry border point. Though he knew stories of trucks that arrive with illegal timber, he declined to talk about how they negotiate their way.

At roadblocks in the DRC, the truck driver must pay an informal ‘tax’ that is less than the official timber tax, says Peer Schouten, author of Roadblock Politics: Origin of Violence in Central Africa (2022).
“Instead of paying an official tax, you line the pockets of the checkpoint operators. That way is cheaper because you can get some kind of manufactured informal receipt that you can give to your boss,” says Schouten.

“For people at the roadblock, this is their way of making money. This is a business opportunity for people who have guns or administrative authority,” he adds.

A soldier who worked along the road told The Africa Report that timber is moved in unimaginable ways, including in government trucks or trucks owned by reputable companies. He said if a truckload was questioned, calls came from superiors ordering them to let it go.

Other timber trucks move on by name-checking military generals, the soldier added. A timber trader also said timber can be moved easily through checkpoints by mentioning a connection to senior army officers.
The Uganda government admits that the smuggling trade between the two countries is huge. As of 2022, the Bank of Uganda estimated informal trade to be worth $275m, more than half of the recorded formal trade.

‘Big men’ smugglers

Timber smuggling is fuelled by “big guys” says Abwoli Banana, a professor at Makerere University’s School of Forestry, Environmental and Geographical Sciences, who has researched timber for more than three decades.

Banana says timber passes through official borders and checkpoints unquestionably, and is moved throughout the day, not only at night.

“Those guys are strong enough to make sure that timber passes through without any documents,” he says. “If you’re a small guy, you cannot move timber.”

Schouten, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, agrees that political connections are needed, especially during transportation, as a lot of money changes hands.
“If you want to be in the timber trade, you need to know a general, a politician and armed groups to do business or you’ll be harassed too much,” says Schouten.

“There is not as much chaos in the Congo as some people point out,” he says, “but you need to know the businessmen in Bunia and Butembo, who are also the political and military elites.”
A former Ugandan National Forestry Authority (NFA) officer who spoke off the record said elite military engaged in the business are above the law.

“High-ranking government and military officials [have] military cars that escort illegal timber to the market,” he said.

“The powerful people, their timber is escorted, it comes clear with no payment, no documents,” he adds.
In July 2023, Daily Monitor, an independent local newspaper, reported on a 2020 incident in which a truck loaded with hardwood timber and contraband cigarettes being driven by two soldiers was confiscated by URA officers and taken to the tax agency’s headquarters. The smuggled merchandise had disappeared by the next morning.

‘Not my job’

Who should detect or arrest illegal timber traders in transit? No one wants to take responsibility. Uganda’s environmental police and NFA are under the Ministry of Water and Environment.
A URA spokesperson told The Africa Report that the NFA probably have more roadblocks than the URA. However, NFA public relations officer Juliet Mubi said the agency’s responsibility is the protection of Uganda’s forests, not those outside the country’s borders.

Bob Kazungu, the acting assistant commissioner for forestry at the Ministry for Water and Environment says the NFA is mandated to arrest anyone dealing in illegal timber even if it’s imported.
“There are no guidelines” on timber coming from DRC, says Enock Abaine, commander of Uganda’s environmental police. “We have not been targeting them,” he adds.

The contraband business has an ugly history: it started, picked up and flourished during the 1990s when the Ugandan army occupied parts of eastern DRC during the Great African War. And it has never ceased.

Brutal history

In 1996, Rwanda and Uganda invaded the DRC, backing Laurent Kabila’s rebel movement, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFLC). Within a year, Kabila had marched to Kinshasa, ousting Mobutu Sese Seko. It didn’t take long for Kabila to fall out with his Rwandan and Ugandan backers and he attempted to push them out in 1998.

Rwanda and Uganda soldiers moved to eastern DRC where they supported various rebel movements fighting to overthrow the man they had catapulted to power. From 1998 to 2001 the soldiers and rebels looted DRC resources, including timber.

Even after Uganda soldiers withdrew from Congo in 2002, high-ranking government officials continued smuggling timber. In 2003, Major General Kahinda Otafiire, then the minister of environment, was linked to the sacking of a soldier heading an ad hoc timber monitoring unit after he impounded six trucks ferrying Congolese timber for Otafiire without a permit.

A 2002 UN investigation shed light on the large-scale looting systematically organised and engineered by high-ranking military officials in the Uganda government. Those named in the UN report include President Yoweri Museveni’s brother General Salim Saleh, currently a senior presidential advisor, Otafiire, currently minister of internal affairs, and Saleh’s wife, among others.

If it wasn’t the outright theft of minerals, forest products like timber or cash crops such as coffee, it was systematic plundering in which fictitious companies were fronted to source natural resources. Some of these companies engaged in nefarious acts like producing counterfeit Congolese francs that they used to purchase minerals and other products they wanted from the DRC.

DARA-Forest case study

The UN investigation panel highlighted the case of a Uganda-Thai company, DARA-Forest, which engaged in ransacking forests in the Ituri and Equatorial provinces for two years. It was estimated that the company was exporting 48,000m³ of timber per year.

The trees were felled in DRC regions controlled by the Ugandan army and a rebel movement it backed. While some wood was earmarked for the local Ugandan market, other raw materials went to foreign markets.

“Our investigation in Kampala has shown that mahogany originating in the DRC is largely available in the capital, at a lower price than Ugandan mahogany. This price difference is due to the lower cost of acquisition of timber,” the report said.

Import taxes were “generally not paid when soldiers escort those trucks or when orders [were] received from some local commanders or General [James] Kazini.”

Kazini was the commander of Uganda soldiers fighting in the DRC. When Congolese timber reached Kampala, DARA-Forest representatives colluded with Uganda government officials to establish “a scheme to facilitate [its] certification” as timber that had been legally logged from national forests, facilitating its export to international markets.

The DARA-Forest company, headquartered in Uganda, was owned by two Thai citizens and a Ugandan, but the UN report noted “unconfirmed information indicates that members of Museveni’s family were shareholders”.

The Ugandan government countered the UN report with its own commission of inquiry. Never made public, the report dismissed many of the UN’s findings but confirmed links between Ugandan army officials and some companies as well as businessmen who were exploiting Congo’s natural resources. Among those the commission recommended prosecuting was Salim Saleh. It also called for the disciplining of Kazini whose actions “shamed Uganda” on the global stage.

It found that Saleh’s wife had been involved in a “diamond smuggling ring” and was connected to a company that the UN said supplied counterfeit Congolese francs to procure minerals.

Spoils from conflict

The DRC sued Uganda at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over the exploitation of its natural resources. After two decades of litigation, the case ended in 2022 with the court ordering Uganda to pay the DRC $325m. The amount includes $60m specifically for resources that were looted.
Professor Banana agrees that smuggling wood has its roots in the war in the eastern DRC. “The guys were fighting [but] most of those guys were bringing timber here,” he says.

Despite the lack of figures, since the Congo war “there has been an increase in presence of Congolese timber on the [Ugandan] market which has continued up to today,” he adds. Due to global scrutiny and the litigation at the ICJ, the overt involvement of high-ranking government officials in the smuggling business is no longer as prevalent.

But smuggling this timber, says Kristof Titeca, a researcher and professor at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, “showed high-level government officials ways to make money.”

Part three:

In Kampala, ‘Made in Uganda’ furniture pride obscures ‘open secret’ of illicit Congolese timber
Ugandan prisoners hone African mahogany into furniture at a government-run business that takes pride of place at the Uganda Prisons furniture showroom at the Uganda Manufacturers’ Association (UMA) showgrounds in Kampala.

At the Uganda Prisons headquarters, spokesperson Frank Baine proudly points to chairs in his office, while tapping a table.

“It’s one of the most durable types of timber; these chairs can go for 100 years, guaranteed,” he says, adding: “Furniture made from mahogany can withstand any tension or pressure.”
The institution supplies furniture to government offices, including the office of President Yoweri Museveni and parliament.

Customer is king

Senior Superintendent of Prisons Benjamin Bunkwaitse Ngabwah, who is in charge of industries and production, says the mahogany is sourced from the DRC. Still, they have no interest in conducting due diligence on whether the timber is sourced through the right procedures.
“Once the supplier delivers to our stores, and we see it’s timber, we count the number of pieces and pay the supplier,” says Ngabwah.

Uganda prisons contract suppliers who deliver mahogany to their storeroom. Their suppliers have trading permits allowing them to transport timber, but prison authorities do not check the permits, saying that the wood has already been checked many times along the road at security checkpoints.
“As long as timber comes and reaches our stores, that is all [we care about],” he says.

No paper trail

Leading furniture companies in Kampala also rely on mahogany that is smuggled outright from the DRC or transported with fake documents or no documents, as this four-part investigation details.
There is little attention on how the timber is sourced among end users. And those who claim to care, have no evidence that the timber has passed through legal channels.

In Ndeeba, the largest timber market in Kampala, The Africa Report approached Baltarazi Muramuzi, a leader among the Congo timber dealers. He said stories of suppliers moving timber to Kampala are not for sharing with the media because some don’t pay taxes.

Once timber arrives at the markets in Kampala and furniture workshops, it is no longer illegal, due to loopholes in the law, according to Professor Abwoli Banana of Makerere University. Indeed, no one wants to inspect it.

The Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) says it can only enter company premises if it has adequate information of wrongdoing.

Bob Kazungu, Uganda’s acting assistant commissioner for forestry at the Ministry for Water and Environment, argues it is counterproductive to inspect furniture companies and timber dealers to check their documents.

“You can never get good results as [law] enforcement agencies by raiding these places because … they will provide you with forged documents, and you will go to court and spend all your time arguing,” he says.

Hardwood, Uganda furniture favourite

Despite saying that they try as much as possible to ensure that they deal with legitimate timber suppliers, Gideon Mayanja, factory manager at Erimu Company Limited, which has operated for 25 years in Uganda, says there are certain things they cannot confirm.

“We can’t ensure that a [supplier] has paid tax fully,” he says. “That is not easy to tell.” Paying tax is a prerequisite for importing timber into the country.

Mayanja says they encourage timber suppliers to “use the right procedures” when sourcing wood from the DRC.

Master Wood Investments, a company that has produced furniture for more than three decades, largely relies on hardwood.

“I have never asked about this,” production manager Jean Mary Munabi says when asked if they require suppliers to produce documents of the timber’s source.

When a supplier delivers timber, “we check whether the measurements are okay and the quality. We offload and put it in our stores”, he says.

To protect Uganda’s environment and to avoid any issues with the government, Abraham Opio, furniture production manager at Nile House, a large Ugandan furniture manufacturer, says they rely on imported timber from the DRC and South Sudan.

We ensure that suppliers have lumbering permits

He says the company has put in place stringent measures requiring all their suppliers to produce documents from the URA confirming that the timber is imported legally, as well as forestry documents from the countries where it’s imported from confirming that the wood was legally harvested.

The market wants mahogany, and Congo timber is of the highest quality, according to Footsteps Furniture marketing executive Frank Nsubuga, who serves high-profile and government customers.

“We ensure that suppliers have lumbering permits,” he says, adding that through checks, the company ensures that they don’t buy endangered species and also undergo due diligence.

Museveni, cheerleader of ‘Ugandan’ furniture

Uganda banned logging indigenous species from its forests since the 1990s and the ban has never been lifted, leading its furniture industries to rely on hardwood from Congo. Uganda views DRC forests as a source of wood, while revenue generated from taxes on imported wood and its ecosystem plays a vital role in the country’s rainfall patterns.

While Uganda pays lip service to protecting the Congo Basin, the reality is much more apparent.
Vice President Jessica Alupo represented Museveni at the three-basin summit – Amazon, the DRC and Borneo Mekong Southeast Asia – in Congo Brazzaville in October 2023.

Her impassioned speech on climate change and Uganda’s affiliation with the Congo Basin contrasts with President Museveni’s actions.

Museveni has created a sustained drive to promote the local furniture industry over the past eight years. In 2016, he commended Uganda prisons for making top-quality furniture and promised to issue a directive ensuring “government departments, even State House [president’s residence] … to buy furniture from prisons”.

The president provided the prisons with financial support to buy new machines and revamp furniture workshops to prepare for the anticipated market boom, head of Uganda prisons Johnson Byabashaija said in an interview with a local publication in 2019.

“The president has given us some capital and directed us to produce furniture for the ministries,” Byabashaija said. “The furniture you see in parliament was made by the Uganda Prisons Service. Most of the furniture in the president’s office is made by the prison. Those big maroon chairs you see during important ceremonies, are made by Uganda Prisons Service.”

The president’s 1 July 2019 directive, issued by the then-permanent secretary for the ministry of finance, called on “accounting officers, heads of state enterprises, public corporations and heads of state parastatals to procure all their furniture requirements from national and or resident providers engaged in [the] manufacturing process”.

Ngabwah has pinned the letter to a bulletin board in his office. And orders for furniture from government agencies have been flowing in.

“For the office of the president, I have delivered an order worth about USh50m [roughly $13,000]. I have delivered an order from the parliament of Uganda. We have an order from the National Drug Authority of about USh23m [roughly $6,000] and more,” says Ngabwah.

The numbers don’t add up

Although there is plenty of Congolese timber in Kampala, data on Uganda’s official timber imports from the country are scanty and unreliable given the under-declaration of what is officially imported by dealers.

According to UN Comtrade, a global trading platform, 88,847 tonnes of mahogany worth $3.2m entered the country in 2020 and 2021. There was no data for 2022. According to the statistics, no other species were imported besides African mahogany.

The URA provided data for a slightly different period: 2,561 entries of mahogany from the DRC were recorded between July 2019 and June 2022, worth USh8.9bn (about $2.3m). Its quantity is hard to compute because kilograms and cubic metres are mixed in the entries. Additionally, there is no quantity for 89 of the entries. The URA describes this as human error.

At the time of the interview with The Africa Report, Erimu bought each piece of timber for USh200,000 (roughly $52 for one piece), although the prices fluctuate.

This means that the company spends about $460,000 on timber a year; 95% of it being spent on Congolese timber.

Erimu’s Mayanja says that the company utilises at least 14 trucks of timber yearly at a minimum guess. But the number can increase to 20 trucks depending on furniture demand. A truck normally delivers 600-700 pieces of timber.

Ngabwah said that from May 2022 to November 2023 the prison had spent USh2bn on timber, which comes to about $530,000 if you factor in the exchange rate.

“I would say mahogany makes up 80%,” he says, referring to the prison wood order. That would mean that around $420,000 was spent on purchasing Congolese timber.

At Nile House, Opio said they use not less than 3,000 pieces of mahogany per year, which translates to $156,000, basing the price on the same 2023 benchmark. According to our calculations, three companies spend more money on imports than what is captured in the URA’s tax database.

Unreliable statistics

Any statistical evidence showing that the local furniture industry consumes more timber than officially imported would be a clear indication “that they are consuming illegal wood,” says forestry assistant commissioner Kazungu.

Perhaps, he says, an argument can be made that “there seems to be much more [timber] volume than what is reported”.

Kazungu hastens to add that there is a need to be “sure that the volume of wood reported in the FAO statistics resonates with the wood that we are consuming as a local furniture industry.” If it’s not, then it’s not right, he says.

Professor Banana says data from the URA is not reliable. According to statistics from the URA and UN Comrade, Uganda has only imported mahogany and two shipments of iroko, another rare hardwood, worth $9,989 over the past three years.

Another possible indicator of illegal timber on the market in Kampala is the species on offer. According to statistics from URA, Uganda only imported mahogany and two shipments of iroko between June 2019 and June 2022. However, furniture companies and timber dealers offer other species from the DRC.
Kazungu says it could be a problem of labelling, which is usual in the region. “Not many people understand the species … species could likely be misrepresented,” he says.

In addition to timber without permits, a Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) study found that species were being misdeclared, leading to timber being improperly taxed or not at all.

Paul Omar Cerutti, head of the DRC office at the Center of International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry, says that Uganda timber import datasets are undependable.

“I have never seen a dataset that looks like something decent,” he says. “It is clear that the legality of timber traded from the DRC and its potential negative impacts on our common environment are less important to importing eastern African countries than the benefits of filling their internal demand for timber.”

Part four:

Kenya talks big on climate, while illegal timber from ancient trees flows in daily from the DRC
Since William Ruto ascended to the presidency, Kenya has positioned itself as the continent’s climate change champion. But the country is a key market of illegally logged timber, consuming as many as 300 trucks of timber monthly from the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, part of the Congo Basin carbon sink.

In stark contrast to the agenda Ruto is championing, our investigation reveals that not only is official data suspect, but Kenya authorities emphatically state that illegally logged DRC-sourced timber is not their concern.

Ruto repeatedly defends and calls for the protection of the world’s basins and rainforests, including that of Congo.

“Their integrity ought to be, without question, the foremost priority of all humanity,” said Ruto at the Three Basins Summit – Amazon, Borneo-Mekong-Southeast Asia, and Congo – held in Brazzaville in October 2023.

Talking heads

Ruto, who holds a PhD in plant ecology from the University of Nairobi, gave a captivating speech, earning him applause and cheers.

If well-taken care of, the president said that the three basins have the potential to set humanity on a new path of transformation through ecologically responsible production and consumption. Ruto said the role of the basins “has always been potent; never has it been as clear and urgent as it is today”.

These are important words from an African standard-bearer, who also chairs the African Union Heads of State committee on climate change. Last year he hosted the inaugural Africa Climate Summit. Due to his efforts, Ruto was featured in Times Magazine’s 100 influential climate leaders in 2023.

While he carries the flag for defending Africa against climate disaster, a different reality is played out on the ground.

“If Kampala takes 30 trucks of timber, it will be full. But Kenya, I think within a month, they take around 300 trucks and the demand is still high,” Rashid Kabuye, a Ugandan timber clearing agent on the DRC and Uganda border tells The Africa Report.

Can Ruto use his pulpit?

Change is necessary from the top to combat the massive deforestation of the Congo Basin. Ruto has an opportunity and moral authority to set the standard that can restrict the entry of illegal wood into Kenya, says Nyaguthii Chege, chairperson of the Kenya-based Green Belt Movement.

“He has the pulpit and the megaphone through which he can announce that this is the standard we have,” Chege tells The Africa Report.

And she should know. The Green Belt Movement was founded by Nobel Laureate Wangari Maathai, who served as a goodwill ambassador of the Congo Basin forest ecosystems.

Chege says that Kenyans must imagine themselves as part of a neighbourhood that includes the DRC. “Congo is two borders away from us,” she says. “We would be hypocritical to be focused on protecting our forests … and turn a blind eye to the destruction that is happening in the Congo Basin for our benefit, whether direct or indirect.”

Kenya has had a ban on logging indigenous trees through various legislations and presidential decrees since 1964, Kenya Forestry Services (KFS) tells The Africa Report. As Kenya’s economy expands, the demand for timber has outpaced the supply, prompting the country’s traders to set eyes on the DRC’s ancient, indigenous and endangered trees in search of hardwood.

Kenyans – timber’s ‘big men’

Kenyan dealers are a common feature in Lia, a border point on the Uganda-DRC frontier, where timber with questionable, if any, documents passes into Uganda en route to Kenya. The Kenyan dealers are referred to as ‘Somalis’ because Kenyans of Somali descent dominate the trade, say sources.
As the main drivers of the timber business, the dealers are revered and reviled in equal measure because they can out-compete their Ugandan counterparts and drive up prices.

“The way ‘Somalis’ do business is not how others do business. If they say they want timber, they will get it,” Rashid Muhindo, a Ugandan timber clearing agent tells The Africa Report.

As much as 80% of timber that arrives at Lia is destined for Kenya, a person working at the border said in an interview.

At the Malaba border, the main border between Kenya and Uganda used by timber trucks, clearing agents told The Africa Report that trucks loaded with timber are cleared daily.

Sticky statistics

Official statistics The Africa Report received from the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) reflect timber volumes entering the country. KRA statistics indicate that 145,479 tonnes of timber, or 468,924m3, entered Kenya between January 2020 and December 2022.

Though KRA does not detail the species, the UN Comtrade database does. Timber imported into Kenya was declared as mahogany except for 624 tonnes of Afzelia africana and 6.6 tonnes of iroko, or African teak. Afzelia africana, also sometimes called African mahogany, was listed as an endangered species in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 2022.
According to official data, roughly 132 tonnes, or four trucks, were entering Kenya daily between 2020 and 2022, which is less than half of what Uganda traders on the border witness.

The KRA also shared data from July to December 2023, showing an astronomical boom in trade. In the six months, 705,606m3, equivalent to 13,606.7 tonnes of timber, was imported into Kenya. All the imports were mahogany except 14.6 tonnes of mvule, or Milicia excelsa, and 0.32 tonnes of pine.

But Kenya’s data is highly questionable, Silvia Ferrari, a wood scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and co-author of the study whose data was collected from the timber park in Congo, says in an interview. It is questionable because there is a discrepancy between cubic metres and the mass in kilograms.

“The weight and volume don’t correspond,” Ferrari says. “I don’t know what is correct, the volume or the weight.”

Here is why. A cubic meter of mahogany weighs 600-700kg when dry. But if not dry, it weighs 800-1,000kg, Ferrari says. Logging in eastern DRC is done by artisanal loggers who lack the technology to dry the timber, thus wood exported from the region is never dry.

Kenya’s July to December 2023 imports of 690,686m3 of mahogany would weigh 587,083 tonnes, which is 49 times more than the weight captured by Kenya data – a cubic metre of wood does not weigh 19kg.

Under documented

The laissez-faire process under-declared timber without documentation is cleared at Lia extends to the Kenya-Uganda border. Kenya officials and clearing agents tell The Africa Report that the Uganda border’s clearance is considered sufficient to indicate that the timber was felled legally in DRC.
At Kenya’s Malaba border, The Africa Report spoke to three clearing agents familiar with places like Lia, which are used for timber in transit to enter Uganda.

“Here, we don’t consider DRC documents,” said one clearing agent. “For us, we declare based on Uganda documents. If you’re in Uganda, you declare based on DRC documents,” said another clearing agent.
A transit document (T1) issued by Uganda at the entry border and a forestry document issued by authorities in Uganda is all that is required at the Kenya border.

Clearing agents say drivers of overloaded trucks bribe officials at weighbridges in Uganda en route to the Kenya border. Most truckers come with a full load and pay the same taxes as a smaller load.
Timber is carried by heavy-duty double diff trucks that can transport an excess load, passing through rough terrain and slippery roads.

“We carry timber at maximum because that is how we make a profit,” says another agent.

Corruption at Kenya’s border

Trucks arrive at the Kenya border with as many as 65-70 tonnes of timber, clearing agents say, which is an overload of 15-20 tonnes. Trucks are allowed to carry 30 tonnes on East African roads. A full load, which includes the truck’s weight and the cargo, will total around 48-50 tonnes depending on the type of truck.
A clearing agent said it cost between about $180 to $220 in bribes to pass through the three weighbridges in Uganda before reaching the Kenya border.

Once a truck arrives at the border, its owner appoints a clearing agent as a go-between to deal with KRA officials. Timber is measured in cubic metres during the clearing process. The agent invites a customs official to measure the timber and compute the cubic metres.

The timber is often rearranged before customs officials enter the truck to take measurements. When trucks are overloaded to the extent that they can’t be opened, the measurements are taken from outside. After measurements are taken, clearing agents say they ‘negotiate’ with customs officials to accept a declaration of fewer cubic metres, corresponding with what was declared in Uganda.

Trucks that arrive with an excess load can measure up to 42m3. Clearing agents explain that through negotiations with customs officials, they may declare it as 25m3 for tax assessment, giving the KRA clearing officials a percentage of the taxes as a bribe.

Once timber trucks are cleared and enter Kenya, they unload excess wood at a private weighbridge that also operates as a timber park, located about 2km from the Malaba border.

They only proceed to Nairobi or other destinations with the allowable load of 30 tonnes. Clearing agents said that unlike in Uganda, where it’s easy to bribe officials to pass through weighbridges, it’s much harder in Kenya, so the excess load is discharged.

What Kenya officials say

The KRA and Kenya Forest Services (KFS) work at the border in timber clearance. The Africa Report shared the findings of this investigation with the two agencies.

In response to questions, the KRA lists eight required documents for timber clearance. All are acquired from other Kenyan agencies at the border, except two. The first is a certificate of origin that would have presumably come from the DRC. But timber never arrives at the Lia-Uganda border with a certificate of origin, say people at Uganda entry points. The second is a T1 document issued by Uganda at the point of entry.

The KRA said that at the Uganda border, timber importers will have presented and verified all the documents. “The processing of timber consignments begins at the Uganda-DRC border, where customs officials from both partner states verify and assess all necessary documentation” before the issuance of transit document (T1). It’s the documents issued by Uganda that the KRA authenticates.

The KFS, in response to our questions, said that only the KRA has the mandate to clear imports. “It is after all these clearances that the KFS gives a movement permit for use while on the Kenyan roads,” the agency said.

The KFS says before timber “is cleared by the country [DRC] of origin it must satisfy the regulations”.
But in another set of questions, KFS notes that areas in North Kivu and environs are in rebel territory and “therefore controlled by community clans”, adding: “It is sad to say that the village elders in these communities collect some levy (musoro) from timber merchants who then are allowed to extract/harvest timber.”

The agency added that “when this timber gets to the border point, the DRC government collects its tax, then certifies the consignment fit for export”.

When asked about timber parks where trucks unload excess wood, KRA said: “After payment of the requisite taxes, our role as customs ends with the release of the [truck transporting timber] to the clients.”
Green Belt’s Chege says agencies like the KRA and KFS must play their role of ensuring that they put in place processes and systems that bar the importation of illegally harvested timber into Kenya.

“They should be able to monitor the source of timber that is coming into the country so that we don’t become a highway for the processing of illegal timber,” Chege adds.

Links:
Part one: https://www.theafricareport.com/341713/timber-hustling-lia-a-thriving-hub-for-congolese-mahogany-trafficked-to-uganda-kenya/
Part two: https://www.theafricareport.com/341912/big-men-an-ugly-history-and-the-ruthless-congo-basin-timber-smuggling-business/
Part three: https://www.theafricareport.com/341984/in-kampala-made-in-uganda-furniture-pride-obscures-open-secret-of-illicit-congolese-timber/
Part four: https://www.theafricareport.com/342055/kenya-talks-big-on-climate-while-illegal-timber-from-ancient-trees-flows-in-daily-from-the-drc/