ABSTRACT
African Rosewood (especially Pterocarpus erinaceus) remains the most traded and internationally sought after endangered wood species for the past decade. The explosion in the trade of rosewood is directly linked to the rise of global China since rosewood furniture is associated with a cultural renaissance in a new paradigm of the Chinese economic revolution. Due to the explosive demand for African rosewood in African countries such as Benin, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Nigeria and Mozambique, the species’ natural populations are declining and tending towards extinction in several countries in Africa. Using the realist synthesis review approach, inspiration from network theory and key informant interviews, this chapter contributes to the rosewood debate by shedding light on the power relations among key actors in the rosewood conundrum in Africa. The chapter has shown that Chinese traders and politicians are major rosewood actors in Africa and have more bargaining powers in the trade as they have both strong and weak actors to bargain with. In the same vein, it reveals that various regulatory processes set in motion by different African states to contain and manage the spike in rosewood extraction, mostly due to the Chinese trade demand, have not been successful. This is depicted by the various lifting and placing of bans on the trade and felling of rosewood in most African countries. As a way forward, there is a need for a regional approach in dealing with the rosewood trade and its associated challenges instead of the various droplets of country-specific approaches, which have been largely ineffective.
