Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2015 22:36:02 +0200
26 Jun 2015 18:18
Africa was a minor player in the world’s drug trade before 2002, but has been rising in prominence as a transit hub since 2010
WEST Africa is becoming an established route for the trafficking of methamphetamines to East and South Asia via South Africa or Europe, and East Africa is a key hub in heroin smuggling, the UN’s just-released World Drugs Report 2015 indicates.
In replies to the annual report questionnaires, Africa was a minor player in the world’s drug trade before 2002, with the UN’s Office on Drugs & Crime indicating that it was only mentioned sporadically as a transit region for heroin reaching Europe.
But since 2010, the continent has increased in prominence; among East African countries, Tanzania appears to be the most prominent going by number of mentions, although Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda are also emerging as key transit hubs, says the report.
It’s possibly linked to the tourism industry at the Coast, and Italy in particular appears to be affected by this flow to a significant extent.
Guinea-Bissau has gained notoriety as a narco-state, in which drug cartels have bought off politicians and virtually taken over state institutions, funding elections and using Bissau airport as a transit hub, with impunity.
There’s also data to suggest there may be pockets of emerging cocaine use in Africa, related to the rise in trafficking through the continent and increased affluence.
However, addicts in Africa are the least likely to access treatment or rehabilitation, the report says. About 1 in 18 problem drug users are receiving treatment in Africa (primarily for cannabis use), compared with one in five problem drug users receiving treatment in Western and Central Europe, one in four in Oceania, and one in three in North America.
The report indicates that traffickers are evolving their routes in ways unique to the type of drug being smuggled.
Synthetic drugs, which include ecstasy, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, are believed to be produced all around the world, and significant increases in seizures over the past five years indicate new routes are being created to connect regional markets.
“West Africa in particular appears to have become an established source of methamphetamine trafficked to East and Southeast Asia via South Africa or Europe,” the report indicates.
Major producers of opiates (or narcotics derived from the poppy plant, such as opium, morphine, and heroine) include Afghanistan, Myanmar, Laos, Mexico, and Colombia.
Afghan opiates are generally smuggled to Europe on the “Balkan route’’ through neighbouring Iran and overland to Turkey, a major transit point. Or they move north via central Asia to Russia, south through Pakistan, and onward to southern and eastern Asia.
New seizures made in Armenia and Georgia, countries never featured on the Balkan route, indicate that trafficking networks are experimenting with new trajectories, the ODC said.
The world’s three major suppliers of cocaine are Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Cocaine usually flows north from the Andean countries to the U.S. and Canada and across the Atlantic to Europe via the Caribbean or Africa. Cocaine traffickers increasingly transport large quantities via sea, accounting for about 60% of the total quantities seized in 2013, according to the report.