The Forestry Commission of Ghana disclosed on Friday that the country’s total production of timber and timber products in 2025 stood at 952,000 cubic meters (952,000 m³).
The Commission’s Chief Executive, Hugh Brown, said during the launch of the 2026 annual Tree for Life Reforestation Initiative that the volumes translated into an estimated value of 260 million U.S. dollars, including both exports and local supplies.
The 2025 production compares with the 489,977 m³ domestic supply for the full year and an export volume of 207,902 m³ for the first three quarters of 2024, according to Fordaq, an online forest product marketplace.
From an estimated forest cover of 6.4 million hectares, about 27 percent of Ghana’s total land area, Brown noted that the forestry sector contributes significantly to the socio-economic development of Ghana, with an estimated 20 percent of Ghana’s population depending directly or indirectly on forests for their livelihoods, food, and health needs.
To sustain this contribution, Brown said the government introduced the annual Tree for Life Reforestation Initiative in 2025 to boost the forest sector economy and ensure that the country’s forest cover remains sustainable amid resource exploitation.
According to him, the first year of the Tree for Life Reforestation Initiative in 2025 recorded the planting of nearly 31 million tree seedlings across the country.
“In 2025, a total of 23,600 hectares of deforested and degraded landscapes across the country were put under restoration through enrichment planting and forest plantation development,” Brown said.
Out of this, he said, 1.9 million seedlings were planted under the amenity planting component, while 2.1 million were planted by farmers within their farming systems under the tree-on-farm components.
“A recent survival survey conducted in forest reserves within the areas planted in 2025 presented a success rate of between 65 percent and 85 percent in the High Forest Zone and 40 percent and 78 percent in the Northern Savannah Zone,” he stated