The Ghanaian government has signed a landmark agreement which will help it stop the export of illegally-cut timber, thus helping to conserve the country's forests.
The agreement is between the government and a British company which develops computer software which can track bar-coded timber. The software will help Ghana identify and plug "leakages" in the supply chain as logs move from forests to markets, said Fredua Agyeman, technical director for forestry at the Ghanaian Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, in an interview with AllAfrica in Accra.
Alex Gayer, commercial director of the British firm, Helveta, added that the system will allow not only governments and business, but also non-governmental organizations and local communities to track the movement of timber.
"In Ghana, it [the system] is being selected to be the backbone of the national wood tracking system. And that should bring substantial benefits," he said.
Illegal logging, in which timber is harvested, transported and sold in violation of national laws, is an ongoing problem in many African countries. It contributes to deforestation and the loss of millions of dollars in revenue.
In Liberia, for example, home to one of Africa's largest rain forests, the illegal trade in timber fueled the country's civil war for years, leading to United Nations sanctions on exports which were only recently lifted.
Ghana last year became the first country to sign a "voluntary partnership agreement" (VPA) with the European Union, a major importer of timber, providing for the establishment of a licensing scheme to ensure that only legal timber from producing countries enters the EU.
The agreement between Ghana and Helveta was recently signed at a ceremony at Ghana's Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources in downtown Accra. The ministry's chief director, Ahmed Bin Said, signed on behalf of the government and Alex Gayer signed for the company.
In a speech in June, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Collins Dauda, was quoted as saying that revenue from timber has been "stabilized" at about U.S. $212 million over the past five years, accounting for about 11 percent of export revenues. He noted that the greatest challenge facing the industry was rapid exploitation, which has resulted in disastrous deforestation and consequent environmental degradation.
In an interview following the signing ceremony, Fredua Agyeman acknowledged that "obviously there are problems of illegal activities in the field." But he cautioned that until the tracking system was installed, the government would not be able to quantify its extent.
"Once we have [determined] the yield, we should be able to know that what we have given out is actually what is going through the system," he said.
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The new software will track timber as it moves along the supply chain, using information gathered by handheld devices from bar code tags on trees and logs and transmitted by technology which includes data transfer by mobile phone. The fast gathering and entry of information enables those controlling the system to act quickly to stop the movement of illegal timber.
Gayer said that by eliminating paper-based control systems, the new technology would help reduce the risk of fraud, thus boosting revenue from taxes.
He added that Ghana was setting the pace for other countries: "What we are witnessing is a sort of domino effect. Other countries seeing the progress that Ghana is making are following suit, and there are now various countries in the region that are now engaged with the EU in negotiating VPAs and putting in similar systems."
The value of the contract has not been disclosed. The project is being paid for by donor funding provided to the Ghanaian government and administered through the Natural Resources and Environmental Governance program of Ghana.
