AfricaREVIEW OFn Political Economy EDITORS: The Review of African Political Economy Chris Allen and Jan Burgess (ROAPE) is published quarterly by Carfax Publishing Company for the ROAPE international collective. Now 24 years old, BOOK REVIEWS: ROAPE is a fully refereed journal covering all Ray Bush, Roy Love and Morris Szeftel aspects of African political economy. ROAPE has always involved the readership in shaping EDITORIAL WORKING GROUP: the journal's coverage, welcoming Chris Allen, Carolyn Baylies, Lyn Brydon, contributions from grass roots organisations, Janet Bujra, Jan Burgess, Ray Bush, Carolyne women's organisations, trade unions and Dennis, Anita Franklin, Jon Knox, Roy Love, political groups. 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Davidson, Raufu Mustafa (Zaria), Phil O'Keefe, Peter Lawrence, Pepe Roberts and ISSN 0305-6244 Kevin Watkins. ©1999 ROAPE Publications Ltd Review of African Political Economy No.79:5-11 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 1999 ISSN 0305-6244 Africa & the Drugs Trade Chris Allen Sourcing the Study of 'Africa & the Drags Trade' This issue focuses on African involvement in the production, sale and consumption of (illegal) drugs. Production and use of such 'mass' drugs as cannabis and khatt (or qaf) is ubiquitous in Africa, and the continent is becoming ever more drawn into the international trade in (largely) manufactured drugs, a trade estimated by the UN in its 1998 World Drug Report to have been worth $400bn in 1995, some 8 per cent of world exports; only the arms trade was larger, at $800bn. Despite this, as our three contributors' references make clear, the literature on drugs is astonishingly sparse (and often concerned with medical or technical aspects). A mere handful of books and articles appeared on the topic in the 1990s, very few, especially compared with that on most of the phenomena or trends that are associated with the rise of the drug trade in Africa, and which together make up the political economy of the drug industry and trade on the continent (see below). Primary sources for the topic amount to police reports, which are often neither reliable for accessible; press coverage, which is neither complete nor representative; and material from a variety of international agencies: Interpol, the US Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, the International Narcotics Control Board, the UN Drug Control programme, and the non-official Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues (OGD). In addition, one can use interview material from those involved in the trade, but this is not only hard to obtain, but harder still to check for accuracy and reliability. Two of the three contributions in this issue draw on work done for a major UNDCP study of the economic and social implications of drug consumption and trade in eight African states, representing the most substantial, coherent and scholarly attempt to analyse the issue to date. They have had to overcome the problem of limited sources to produce a picture less of Africa's role in international trafficking than of a set of issues arising from the continued domestic growing of cannabis and khatt, and of the impact on this both of changes in Africa's political economy in the last two decades, and of the advent of a significant presence of imported drugs: cocaine, heroin, mandrax and others. Much of this latter trade is entrepot trade: the drugs are in transit, sometimes to elsewhere in Africa but more commonly to Europe and the US. It is this last feature that makes Africa of interest to the international agencies concerned with drugs, and with 'enforcement' aspects - the control, detection and punishment of those who produce, trade and consume drugs. Their perspective is thus one that tends to subsume all drug production and use under one narrow 'trafficking' model; that has low standards of evidence; that is far more concerned with the interests of final consumer countries that those of Africans or African governments; and whose conception of enforcement is akin to that of the American 'War on Drugs'. These perspectives interact with a picture of the nature of African 6 Review of African Political Economy societies, economies and political systems that is best crude or naive, reminiscent of the worst international reporting of African crises and disasters. The OGD is well aware of the narrow vision of the official, international agencies, and tries itself to 'grasp the components of the drug phenomenon and assess how they interact at all levels' (OGD, 1997, quoting its 1992 report), yet while it does try to adopt a political economy approach, it is still the international flow of drugs to Western consumers that is central to its analysis, and its reports on individual African states contain such sad anachronisms as references to 'juju men', and rely on a model of African politics in which all such states are necessarily incompetent and corrupt, this thoughtless denigration, when combined with the anonymity and gossipy nature of OGD's 'sources' (1) makes it difficult to trust their reports, which are the fullest and most independent of those readily available. Changing Patterns of Production & Trade Twenty years ago the drugs most readily available in Africa, including South Africa, were those grown locally: cannabis, in most of Africa, and khatt, largely grown and consumed in The Horn (see Green in this issue). 'Hard' drugs, and the abusive use of Pharmaceuticals, were almost entirely confined to expatriates and tourists. Only mandrax (methaqualone), a drug produced in India and increasingly popular in Southern Africa from the later 1970s, had begun to disturb this pattern by the early 1980s. Since then there have been dramatic changes, involving the integration of Africa into international networks of trafficking, consumption and control. The most obvious feature has been the development of transit routes through African ports and airports for bulk consignments of heroin and cocaine, intended mainly for high- income consumer countries, including some Arab states. While Lagos and Nairobi have probably been the key hubs in this trade, a large number of West, East and North African states are now involved, including Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, the Congo, Zambia, Sudan, and Egypt. One result has been the arrival in (or the return to) Africa of expatriates involved in the trade - Indians and Pakistanis, Dutch, Italians and other Europeans, and Malaysians are often mentioned in the various international reports. Less predictable has been the development of African traffickers. Initally African couriers, often women, were used to transport drugs, but there now exist entire networks, often run by Nigerians (2) or Ghanaians, which import, repackage and distribute heroin and cocaine from Asia, Brazil and other areas. Distribution is through European and American counterparts, or through networks of African expatriates in consumer countries. Nigerian traffickers are now competing with Colombian and Russian distributors, and have begun to shift from reliance on other Nigerians or West Africans (who tend to be targeted by Customs) to more multinational teams. Another effect has been the rapid growth, or even entire development, of markets for hard drugs within Africa, and the associated local processing of varieties of crack,