Enterprise in the Undergrowth: Exploring the Ways Chinese Companies Operate in the Dja Forest in Cameroon

Abstract

Chinese company activity in African forests is often portrayed in oversimplified terms—as a much-needed driver of development or an unwelcome and unconstrained free-for-all. The resulting weak understanding also leads to a low level of engagement by government and non-governmental actors with the operations of these companies on the ground. By examining Chinese engagements in Cameroon’s Dja forest area and avoiding seeing Chinese companies as a homogenous collective, we tease out the heterogeneity in their business profiles, operational practices, and impacts on local communities and the forests. We analyze how Chinese companies, in particular, small- and medium-sized timber enterprises, operate and engage with government. We find that business creativity, which could conceivably be the seedbed for sustainability, is in practice stifled by everyday operations embedded within and enabled by the informal rules and practices that condition the “real” functioning of forestry governance in Cameroon.