Zambian Officials and Chinese Businessmen Illegally Export Rosewood to China

The Environmental Investigation Agency recently published a report titled "Mukula Cartel: How Timber Tafficking Networks Plunder Zambian Forests."

Senior Zambian officials have reportedly orchestrated and facilitated massive trafficking operations that are driving mukula rosewood trees to the edge of commercial extinction, devastating vulnerable forests, and threatening communities' livelihoods. The State-owned company Zambia Forestry and Forest Industries Corporation Limited (ZAFFICO) is secretly used as a cover for well-connected Zambian officials and Chinese business operators to export thousands of mukula logs, despite a ban on their export. The overwhelming majority of the logs goes to China. This expose quotes Chinese entrepreneurs who engage in bribery to facilitate the exports.

China-Zambia Relations

Zambia Reports published on 10 April 2015 an analysis titled "What Lies Ahead for China-Zambia Relations?" by Beyongo Dynamic, a political economist and PhD candidate at the Australian Centre on China in the World.  The author concludes that while some Chinese companies in Zambia have benefited the economy and local Zambians, the practices of other Chinese companies cast doubt that they benefit Zambia.