Africa Region

Over 70% of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa is rural and depends on forests or woodlands for its livelihoods. Sub-Saharan Africa also contains 25% of the world's remaining rainforests and 20% of the world's biodiversity hotspots.

The focus of Bank forest operations in the AFR region is on projects which emphasize policies, institutional capacity and partnerships based on broad consultations with a wide variety of stakeholders. A recent portfolio trend shows that the regions share of overall Bank lending for forests has increased significantly. Furthermore, notable progress has been made in addressing issues of illegal logging, corruption and improving forest sector governance.  Thus, the Africa FLEG process with the Ministerial Conference in October 2003 has paved the way for targeted national and sub-regional efforts to address the problem of illegal logging.