Meet-Up With Young Professionals: Illegality in Cameroon’s Timber Supply Chain: Youth as a Key Factor for Change

1st panelist: Madeleine Ngeunga, investigative journalist and Africa editor at the Pulitzer Center

2nd panelist: Declermont Ateba Logo, expert in tropical forestry

3rd panelist: Ghislain Fomoun, forestry expert, consultant, and program manager at the NGO SAILD

Participants: Young professionals (entrepreneurs, human rights advocates, women’s groups, environment CSOs)

Young professionals in Yaounde, Cameroon, will discuss with decision-makers, civil society, and journalists about the opportunities for youth in the forestry sector; specifically, around the issue of illegality in Cameroon's timber supply chain.

The topic of the meetup is inspired by the story "Cameroun : Comment le bois illégal échappe aux postes de contrôle" by the journalists Madeleine Ngeunga and Josiane Kouagheu for InfoCongo and Le Monde, in which the journalists exposed the mechanisms and circuits by which timber is illegally exploited in Cameroon's forests, then escapes the country's production value chain and leaves the country through unofficial channels and procedures, with the involvement of people working in public structures in particular.