Forests in Africa have been rapidly disappearing and recent assessments suggest that progress towards sustainable forest management has been rather disappointing. While this may appear to justify increasing efforts to improve forest management, this paper highlights the limitations to such an approach. Current trends in African forestry are symptomatic of the larger social and economic situation and interventions in the sector may not be able to address many of the underlying problems in the sector. The impact of key driving forces on future developments suggests that continued forest loss is probably inevitable for at least the next one to two decades. Slow progress towards sustainable forest management is also likely to persist, due to a multitude of constraints. These trends and driving forces present a major dilemma for the forestry sector in Africa, which is that whatever is done to improve forest management may have only a marginal impact. Therefore, it will be essential to assess what is feasible given current levels of social and economic development.