Ghana’s timber export industry recorded its weakest performance in six years in 2025, with volumes falling 20 percent and revenues dropping 21 percent year-on-year, exposing structural problems that a landmark European Union market access achievement alone cannot resolve.
The country exported 217,000 cubic metres of wood and wood products last year, down from 273,000 cubic metres in 2024, generating revenues of €98.38 million, according to data compiled by the Timber Industry Development Division and reported in the International Tropical Timber Organization’s (ITTO) Tropical Timber Market Report. The decline marks the third consecutive year of contraction from a record high of 343,000 cubic metres valued at €153.88 million in 2022.
The product mix driving those numbers tells its own story about the industry’s competitive vulnerabilities. Air-dried sawn wood accounted for roughly 55 percent of export volumes, followed by kiln-dried sawn wood at 14 percent, plywood at 11 percent, and logs at 10 percent. Ghana is exporting predominantly in low-value, minimally processed form, the categories most exposed to price competition and least insulated from tariff disruption. When the United States tightened tariffs on wood products, Ghana, already a marginal supplier compared to Canada, Mexico, and China, found its position in that market further compressed.
Geographic concentration compounds the structural risk. Asia absorbed 63 percent of Ghana’s timber exports in 2025, with Europe at 17 percent, Africa at 13 percent, the Americas at 4 percent, and the Middle East at 3 percent. Dependence on Asian markets, where Ghana holds limited pricing power, leaves the sector highly exposed to demand fluctuations beyond its control.
The one qualified bright spot came from regional trade. Exports to Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) markets rose 7 percent in volume to 19,771 cubic metres, led by plywood sales to Togo, Burkina Faso, and Gambia. President John Dramani Mahama, speaking at the Africa Trade Summit 2026, framed regional momentum as part of a broader strategy to build deeper African value chains under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agenda, though no specific programme for the timber sector has yet followed.
The industry’s contraction runs deeper than trade conditions. The Ghana Timber Millers Organisation reports that 96 timber companies have shut down over the past 15 years, shrinking sector employment from approximately 95,000 workers to around 20,000. Commercially viable natural forest is contracting faster than it is being replenished, and plantation forestry has not scaled sufficiently to fill the gap.
Against that backdrop, Ghana’s achievement of Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) licensing under its Voluntary Partnership Agreement with the European Union carries genuine significance. Ghana became the first African country to secure fast-lane access to EU timber markets, with the first licensed batch entering Europe in October 2025. Samartex Timber and Plywood Managing Director Richard Nsenkyire described the licence as marking “the beginning of a new era in compliant international trade.”
But the FLEGT licence solves market access, not market supply. Europe will now accept Ghanaian timber without additional legal verification. Whether Ghana can produce enough legally sourced, adequately processed timber to make that access commercially meaningful, at a moment when illegal logging, illegal mining, and forest resource depletion are hollowing out concessions, remains the central unanswered question facing the sector.
