Timber smuggling, estimated to be worth $23m a year, from Mozambique’s ancient forests to China is helping to fund a brutal Islamist insurgency as well as a large criminal network in the north of the southern African country.
The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), an NGO fighting environmental crime, revealed data seen by the BBC linking the illicit rosewood trade to funding Islamic State-linked militants in Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province. Despite international safeguards, a four-year EIA investigation exposed poor management of forest concessions, illegal logging, and port corruption, allowing unchecked trade in insurgent-controlled areas. Rosewood includes tropical hardwoods prized for luxury furniture in China.
This revelation aligns with a resurgence in fighting in northern Mozambique. On Friday, at least 100 insurgents launched their boldest attack in three years on Macomia, which the army eventually repelled. The attack confirms the insurgency’s expanding operations due to increased soldier presence in the worst-affected areas. Mozambique analyst Joe Hanlon notes the insurgency has secured enough funds to recruit in neighboring Nampula province. A Mozambique government report from earlier this year indicates that al-Shabab insurgents have exploited the illicit timber trade to “fuel and finance the reproduction of violence.”
The report indicates that insurgents’ activities in smuggling flora and fauna products, including wood, and exploiting forest and wildlife resources, are significantly boosting their fundraising efforts. They are estimated to generate $1.9 million per month from these activities. Due to difficulties accessing the Cabo Delgado region, quantifying their daily involvement in the timber trade is challenging. However, there are reports of firms paying a 10% protection fee to jihadist groups to conduct illegal logging in forest areas.
Valuable forests, including those with rosewood, are divided into concessions, and logging these areas requires a fee paid to authorities. Typically, a Mozambican national licenses these concessions and rents them to Chinese logging firms. According to unnamed sources, around 30% of timber logged in Cabo Delgado may come from insurgent-controlled forests.
Logging and timber sales are believed to occur mainly in three Cabo Delgado regions: Nairoto, Muidumbe, and Mueda, with another area in Napai, Nampula province. Despite China’s ban on logging rosewood, large quantities are imported. Once in China, rosewood is labeled with a customs code for hongmu, enabling researchers to trace it.
In 2023, Mozambique became China’s top African supplier of hongmu, delivering over 20,000 tonnes valued at $11.7 million, surpassing countries like Senegal, Nigeria, and Madagascar. An EIA undercover investigation tracked a massive rosewood shipment from Mozambique.
Between October 2023 and March 2024, investigators tracked approximately 300 containers of pau preto rosewood from the port of Beira to China. This rosewood, found in northern Mozambique and Tanzania, is listed as a threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The shipment, totaling 10,000 tonnes, was valued at around $18 million. EIA undercover footage seen by the BBC revealed that some of the shipment included raw logs, violating Mozambique’s 2017 law on exporting unprocessed timber. The containers also carried processed planks.
According to industry sources, when trees are felled in Cabo Delgado’s forests—whether in concessions operated mainly by Chinese firms or illegally—the timber is processed at sawmills around Montepuez, a large town in Cabo Delgado. This timber, sourced from various locations, is then mixed and transported by trucks to the ports of Pemba or Beira. At these ports, Mozambican authorities are supposed to inspect the cargo and issue permits or export licenses. However, the EIA reports that logs are frequently mis-reported or not declared in customs paperwork.
The EIA investigation revealed that major shipping lines Maersk and CMA-CGM transport rosewood between Mozambique and China. A Maersk spokesperson told the BBC that the company is committed to combatting illegal wildlife trade and only accepts bookings compliant with CITES or legal regulations. They depend on customers to declare cargo content correctly and rely on customs authorities for verification and approval, ensuring shipments have CITES certificates and authority approval.
The statement noted that customers typically load and seal their containers before handing them over to the shipping line. A CMA-CGM spokesperson mentioned that the company transports goods from customers who comply with local and international regulations, but it cannot control the origin of goods in sealed containers. Additionally, CMA-CGM no longer transports unprocessed wood and has a rule against reserving space for it on their vessels from Mozambique.
Deforestation in Mozambique is rapidly increasing, with the country losing approximately 1,000 football fields of forest cover daily, says Global Forest Watch. Despite CITES’ restrictions on rosewood trade, it has become the world’s most trafficked wildlife product, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, surpassing the trade value of elephant ivory and rhino horn.
Pau preto rosewood is listed on CITES Appendix II, which requires the Mozambique government to conduct a thorough non-detriment funding study (NDF) to ensure the trade does not threaten the species’ survival for legal export. The BBC inquired with Cornelio Miguel, Mozambique’s CITES representative, about any NDF on pau preto, but received no comment. Without this assessment, trade violates the treaty, and China, as a signatory, would breach its terms by accepting non-compliant imports.
The BBC contacted Chinese trading firms cited in the EIA report, but none commented on receiving timber from Mozambique. Dr. Annah Lake Zhu from Wageningen University stresses that the treaty’s effectiveness depends on government enforcement and calls for a comprehensive rethink of the rosewood trade. She believes listing species before regulation may create market scarcity. Strengthening laws and a sophisticated tracing system are crucial, but rosewood conservation relies on the commitment of source countries and timber dealers.
In conflict zones like Cabo Delgado, enforcement is challenging. EIA Africa programme manager Raphael Edou highlights Cabo Delgado as an ideal spot for illicit timber trade, citing its trade routes, lawlessness, corruption, and impoverished population. Cabo Delgado also attracts global investors with its valuable resources like oil, natural gas, rubies, and sapphires, including a $20 billion gas liquefaction plant by French energy firm Total.
Gemfields Group, the owner of Fabergé jewellery, holds a 75% stake in the Montepuez ruby mine in Cabo Delgado, generating $167 million in revenue in 2023. Insurgent activity has caused one of Africa’s worst displacement crises, with over a million people fleeing their homes. The insurgents commit atrocities, including massacres, beheadings, rapes, and kidnappings. Entire villages have been bombed and burned.
The violence has destabilized Cabo Delgado for nearly a decade, forcing the government to depend on foreign troops to maintain order. Authorities struggle to enforce laws protecting the region’s most vulnerable people, let alone its environment and forests.
