Between 1980 and 1995, Africa lost more than 10 percent of its forests, or approximately 150 million acres. In the 1990s, the rate of deforestation increased 15% from the 1980s. Between 1990 and 1995, Africa lost more than nine million acres of forest each year to civil unrest, agricultural conversion, overgrazing, wildfires, cutting for charcoal and firewood, and logging. Africa's annual deforestation rate is 0.7 percent. Deforestation is a serious threat for most countries in Africa, whose forests make up the second largest area of tropical forests outside of South America.

West African coastal rainforests once covered approximately 123,000,000 acres. The boom-and-bust pattern of rainforest development emerged in Ghana and other West African countries in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, up to 90 percent of West Africa's rainforests have disappeared due to overgrazing, agricultural expansion, logging, and mining. Ghana has lost much of its forests, but nonetheless has fared slightly better than most West African countries. Nigeria has become a net importer of timber following the devastation of its forests. This loss of rainforest is significantly affecting the climate of the region.

The companies that logged the forests of West Africa are reported to have moved on to new forest frontiers in the Congo Basin. The forests of the Congo Basin form one quarter of the world's rainforests and are home to more than half of Africa's wild plants and animals. Cameroon, Africa's largest timber exporter, has an annual deforestation rate of nearly five hundred thousand acres. The deforestation rate in Congo may soon rival that of Cameroon. It is estimated that in less than twenty years much of the Central African rainforest will be gone.