Producing
Cannabis in Africa South of the Sahara:
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Before sharing what I know – or
what I think I know – on cannabis in sub-Saharan Africa, let me tell you
briefly about what I do not know. In its World Drug Report 2005, the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) stated: “There is very little reliable
information on the extent of cannabis cultivation [worldwide]. Although
cannabis is the illicit drug most widely used, there is much less precise data
on the quantities produced than for other drug-producing plants”[1]. This is but one of the
many paradoxes facing the international drug control system. We may add that
the African situation is probably the one with the largest and deepest information
gap, at least regarding cannabis production and trade. The evidence is patchy
at best, since there are very few studies on the subject of agricultural
production of drug-plants in Africa, with the possible exception of miraa, or qat. As a result,
we know nothing on the surface area dedicated to cannabis cultivation in
Africa, on the quantities of consumable substance(s) produced, even less on how
they have changed over time; we don’t know much about growing methods, yields
per hectare, and we know very little about the African populations that make a
living by growing this illicit crop. Finally, the history of cannabis
production and trade in Africa remains, by and large, a pending endeavour. The
only (or nearly) numbers available are those of seizures carried out by law
enforcement. But these “statistics” – whose conditions of production are opaque
and would deserve a study in their own right – are, at best, indicators of
the activity of law enforcement units; and of little else. In the best of cases, these
police-made numbers inform us only very indirectly on the reality of cannabis
production in Africa and its evolution. The most precise and recent information
currently available to me on the production of cannabis south of the Sahara
date back to the mid1990s and it was produced by the Observatoire
géopolitique des drogues (OGD – Geopolitical Drug Watch) mostly thanks to
funding by the European Commission. The OGD studies were implemented in West
Africa (1993 and 1995), Central Africa (1996) and Southern Africa (1997). What
was then the UNDCP (now UNODC) relied largely on these studies to draft the few
pages dedicated to cannabis production of its 1999 publication The Drug
Nexus in Africa[2]. This presentation is
based largely on the mostly qualitative data resulting from these studies,
which serve as a basis for the formulation of some hypotheses.
SOME HISTORY
Cannabis has long been produced and
used in Africa, at least in Eastern and Southern Africa. According to
historical research, it is highly likely that the San and Khoikhoi people, who
are the earliest inhabitants of Southern tip of the continent used “dagga” (as cannabis is now
known in South Africa) before 1500, i.e. before Europeans came in contact with
them[3]. Cannabis was probably
introduced first in East Africa by Arab merchants, who established trading
posts on the continent “no later than the 12th
century”. The plant and its uses then spread to Southern Africa as
Bantus migrated south[4]. Some present-day uses
of the plant have probably been handed down by history, in Lesotho for
instance, these include using marijuana to treat ailments like heart burn, high
blood pressure, and “nerves”. It is also used to rid horses and donkeys of
parasitic worms. Since the end of the nineteenth century, with the employment
of black people in the mines and on large farms, utilitarian use of cannabis
herb has been common among workers. Marijuana is reputed to give workers more
strength, and more courage. Reportedly, many white employers encouraged use of “dagga”
in the old days. Whether or not this is true, it is clear that cannabis has
been culturally integrated by many of the ethnic groups inhabiting Southern
Africa for years, as is illustrated by the existence of at least one specific word for
“cannabis” in most Southern African languages. Although I have not been able to
find a satisfying historical background of cannabis
cultivation and use in West Africa, the sub-region seems to share common
features with the rest of the continent, at least as far as utilitarian use is
concerned.
CANNABIS USE IN PRESENT-DAY
AFRICA
It is important to understand the
structure of African cannabis consumer markets, since it seems that most of the
African cannabis output is sold in Africa itself, exports outside the continent
are, in my view, marginal compared to what is consumed locally. According to a
study I carried out in urban Ghana in 1995 (and which was broadly confirmed by
other studies elsewhere), cannabis users may be broken down in two broadly
defined categories:
• Those who use the drug
for work, in order to work harder, longer (this is a feature that cannabis is
Africa shares with coca in the Andes), or obtain courage; these users are
overwhelmingly found among the poorer segments of African societies. This category
is in all likelihood the most numerous[5].
• Those
who use the drug for pleasure or recreation; they are found primarily among the
expatriate and the better-off, “westernized” segments of societies. In other
words, there seems to be a strong correlation between the socio-economic
background of African marijuana users and their motivation for using the plant
for psychotropic purposes.
CANNABIS PRODUCTION IN PRESENT-DAY
AFRICA
The testimonies of the people
interviewed during the studies carried out in the 1990s by OGD all converged
that cannabis cultivation was increasing in Africa. I would now like to briefly
outline the factors that I believe caused this increase.
Basic agronomical data
Cannabis has an extraordinary ability to adapt
to many soils and climate, it will grow in ecologically diverse settings, and
it requires comparatively little care and few inputs (especially water),
although yields will improve if water and fertilizers are applied. As a result,
it is grown throughout the continent, from the Sahel to the equator, at
different latitudes and altitudes. The techniques used for and location of
cannabis fields therefore are heavily dependent on local situations. The
plant’s cycle lasts between 4 to 8 months, which may mean 1, 2, 3 and sometimes
even 4 harvests per year, and it may be planted alone or in combination with
other plants (maize for instance), which makes it easy to integrate into a
variety of cultivation systems, from the cocoa plantations of the forest zone
of Côte d’Ivoire to the Afram plains of Ghana or the Niayes of Senegal where
vegetables are grown, or the high plateaux of Cameroon where potatoes and maize
are cultivated to the sugar-cane plains of Swaziland, and the cattle and maize
farms of the Drakensberg mountains of Kwazulu-Natal, etc. Of course, due to
prohibition, the crop cannabis offers many comparative advantages from an
agro-economic point of view. For instance, it may be grown on farms located far
away from markets and still be profitable, which is not the case of many other
cash crops. According to OGD studies with African farmers[6], during the 1990s cannabis had
become the main cash earner of the farms where it was grown, bringing at least
75% of the monetary income, regardless of the socio-economic and natural backgrounds
of these farms. Therefore, once started, it is not an activity that may be
easily given up. This is especially true, since in the majority of cases we
found that cannabis was grown on small farms (in patches of less than one
hectare) of farmer-owners or share-croppers.
Compensation crop
Starting in the 1980s, cannabis
crops emerged as a compensation crop in two special contexts:
• In areas where most
farms grew cash crops and international prices for their produce fell; and,
• In areas
where the degradation of ecological conditions resulted in a reduction
of arable lands.
Both phenomena may occur concomitantly, leading
to a steep degradation of agriculture as an economic activity—a crisis of
agriculture. In all the regions dedicated to cash-cropping where studies were
implemented, the same sequence of events seems to have taken place: the price
of the crop on international markets fell sharply. Then, following advice from
international financial institutions, the official marketing bodies of the said
crops were scaled down, privatised or altogether scrapped (as Togo’s OPAT in
1996) by African states. Under these news conditions, farms no longer benefited
from guaranteed prices, marketing security, subsidised chemicals (fertilizers,
pesticides, etc.) and credit, or any other support to agriculture previously
extended by state bodies. As a result, the monetary revenue of farms dropped
just when the price of inputs such as fertilizers or seeds was going up. In
Senegal, for instance, the price of such inputs rose 50% where the rice sector
was liberalised. Growing cannabis may be an alternative to a loss of revenue.
Cannabis may grow on highly-depleted soil, and may therefore appear as a
solution to the degradation of land. The long drought in the Sahel has resulted
in a reduction of arable land. In Western Gambia, for instance, the drought has
resulted in an increase of soil salinity (the same has occurred in the
Casamance region of Senegal) and farmers have seen their arable land decrease
sharply. A lady explained in 1995 that “before” she harvested enough rice to
cover her family’s needs for a year. Now due to a loss in soil fertility the
harvest only made for three months’ consumption. She started growing cannabis
so as become able to buy rice in order to feed her family. Cannabis may also
emerge as a compensation crop when access to land becomes too expensive,
especially for young farmers. Because cannabis may bring a “good” income even
when grown on a small patch, it can help younger generations launch their own
farms even when they cannot obtain the large land-holdings normally needed for
profitable agriculture in their area. In forest areas, as is illustrated by the
case of western Côte d’Ivoire, the permanence and reproduction of cocoa and
coffee plantations, and therefore of the regional economy as it has functioned
for decades, is threatened by problems due to the impossibility of reproducing
agricultural frontier economies due to the end of forest reserves (depleted by
deforestation), the aging of plantations, and the increasing cost of land
(because there is less and less virgin forest land available). These problems
became more acute in the mid-1980s, and this is precisely when cannabis
production developed in a big way in the region. All the more so since in
addition to the problems above, the prices of traditional cash crops then
dropped sharply: the farm-gate price of coffee was divided by 4 and that of
cocoa by 2.7 between 1988 and 1992. To quote the researcher who implemented the
field study in Côte d’Ivoire in 1995: “nearly all the marijuana producers
interviewed in western Côte d’Ivoire started producing cannabis after the fall
in coffee and cocoa prices in 1988/1989; two-thirds attribute their decision to
grow cannabis to the economic and land crises.”[7]
But while the search for
alternative revenue was the main engine behind the growth of cannabis cropping,
the latter cannot be analysed fully without paying attention to the growth in
local and national demand for marijuana: at the height of the crisis, illicit
drug use, mainly amphetamine (known locally as “Sékou Touré”) but also
marijuana, was adopted by some as a way to compensate for the departure of
waged workers (whom plantation owners could no longer afford to pay) by increasing the
duration of an individual’s work. Such resorting to drugs is frequent among
younger farmers who strive to establish a new plantation on poor-quality land
and who must work double hard to maintain their plantation. Cannabis
cultivation thereby meets the needs of a population that seeks to become part
of a society where available land is rare, expensive and of little potential.
Cannabis affects primarily those with small or very small holdings, but also
farmers who cannot buy their own land: 50% of the marijuana producers interviewed
grew the plant as contractual workers on the plantation of a family member or
acquaintance. They did not know who the sponsor was nor how much profit was
made, but benefited of good protection from law enforcement. Their payment was
often postponed for various growing seasons, until their employer gave them a patch of forest land, a
plantation, a small shop or a taxi. In the new socio-economic conditions marked
by the agricultural crisis and structural adjustment programmes, farmers were
forced to implement new strategies in order to compensate for their loss of
revenue by increasing the added-value per unit of cultivated land. Such an
objective may be achieved either by technical innovation (new seeds, new tools,
new methods, etc.), or by an increase of the amount of work or capital applied
to the land. Although it has costs, as all illicit crops have, the introduction
of cannabis in agricultural production systems appears as both a technical
innovation and an instrument of rapid capitalisation while permitting to rise
up to the new challenges. Because it requires less care than most other crops,
cannabis is less demanding in terms of work. In the conditions prevailing in
many family farms growing cash crops, such an “asset” may be brought to bear to
the full, since the loss of cash revenue due to the fall of prices of licit
crops has impeded access to waged workforce and farmers have fallen back on the
family workforce. In such a context, the more the arable surfaces diminish, the
more cannabis may play its role as compensator because of the revenue it allows
per land unit. Finally, cannabis allows farmers access to a certain type of
savings. Indeed, if it is dried well, marijuana may keep up to a year, and even
longer in some areas. It is therefore possible for some producers not to sell
their whole crop at once but to keep some in reserve. Such “cannabis savings”
may subsequently be sold when needs arise (wedding, funeral, school fees,
health problems, etc.) or when prices are higher (after harvesting season,
prices tend to rise). To summarize, cannabis cultivation appears as a
compensation, sometimes a full-fledged alternative crop and always as a “crisis
cushion”. But this comes at a price, which is high for those who launch
into it and which is due to its illicitness—permanent insecurity, the constant
threat of law enforcement or of thieves without hope for justice.
ARMED VIOLENCE AND CANNABIS
PRODUCTION
As is the case on other continents
for other drug-plants, cannabis production and trade may serve to fund armed
movements in sub-Saharan Africa. But, except perhaps in Casamance and Liberia,
it is probably of little significance compared to the other commodities that
fund or trigger conflicts in Africa: oil, gold, diamonds, and other minerals.
Some governments suppress cannabis plantations
in some regions while ignoring them in others. They usually call forth the need
to fight the “drug scourge” and their duty to the international community (or
even mankind), which legitimises and often pays for this so-called “drug law
enforcement”. For example, in 1996, the Khartoum government launched major
militarised “drug enforcement” operations in the Darfur and Bedja regions,
which also were sensitive areas in terms of armed rebellion. Khartoum was then
claiming to implement a policy recommended by UNDCP[8]. For the most part, such operations
are carried out with great brutality and generally result, at best, in the
destruction of some cannabis crops. Poor peasants are their main victims. Less
anecdotally , the following should be stressed regarding the links between
armed conflicts and cannabis production in Sub-Saharan Africa: to the extent
that marijuana is very widely consumed by African fighters, the mushrooming of
conflicts on the continent is without doubt a stimulant for production—and not
the opposite.
CONCLUSION
Speaking generally, cannabis
production would be primarily a response to economic imperatives; the strategic
dimension, which is essential in the drug production dynamics of countries like
Afghanistan or Colombia, does not appear to be as significant in Africa. Not so
significant, but not altogether irrelevant, since it has been mentioned that
there are some connections between the armed conflicts that rage in Africa and
this illicit crop. Yet, understanding the cannabis economy in Africa means
above all studying problems of economic and political development. Cannabis
highlights the failure of development aid and the side effects, which are never
measured and rarely acknowledged of the policies that have been imposed on
African countries. It also stresses the ability of African farmers to adapt to
the demands of the global economy.
