West Africa, led without envy by Ghana, has become an increasingly important transit hub or springboard for trafficking cocaine to Europe as international criminal networks exploit our region's lack of resources to combat drug smuggling, experts have warned.
Also, a study carried out by the United Nations indicates that Africa is increasingly being used by the drug cartels for processing and consumption of illicit drugs, as well as money laundering, with African governments grappling with how to best face this new threat.
Africa"s law enforcement officers were told in Nairobi, Kenya, last week that for a one-year period, Ghana alone saw the quantity of cocaine seized here jump by 40 fold, from 15kg in 2003 to 617kg in 2004, with most of the cocaine destined for the United Kingdom.
To put things into better perspective, seizures of cocaine increased by 18 percent worldwide and by 4,000% in Ghana from 2003 to 2004.
Africa, as a whole, for the same period witnessed a three-fold jump in the amount of cocaine seized, a surge from 1.1 tonnes to 3.6 tonnes.
The staggering statistics, contained in the latest United Nations report on drug trafficking, were presented to a Nairobi law enforcement conference that gathered anti-narcotics officers from 34 African nations.
Moreover, since the UN study, the quantity of cocaine smuggled to Ghana that has come to the notice of our local law enforcement officers is close to the 3.6 tonnes seized in the whole of Africa in 2004. In November 2005, 588kgs of cocaine were seized in a raid in a house at East Legon. About 2,310kgs of cocaine were imported to Ghana and discharged from the vessel, MV Benjamin, which docked in Tema in April, according to a fact-finding report commissioned by the Ministry of Interior.
Flemming Quist, a law enforcement adviser for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, told the Nairobi conference last week that the surge in seizures in Africa indicated that more cocaine traffickers are using the continent to disguise the origin of their shipments.
He said packages from Africa are less likely to be inspected by US and European customs officers than those from source countries in Latin America.
"Since Ghana is not a production country, it probably won’t be selected for inspection,” Quist said.
But, with high profile cases in recent times, including the US arrest of Eric Amoateng, MP, and the alleged involvement of Ghanaian police officers in the illicit trade, western custom officers have revised their books, adding Ghana to the list of 'high priority’ destinations.
Mr Quist said drug enforcement officers in Africa need more training, and many departments lack the resources they need to inspect heavier traffic from Latin America.
“You can’t patrol a coastline without patrol boats,” Mr Quist said.
Ghana, for instance, does not have coast guards. The Georgina Wood Committee, which investigated 77 parcels of cocaine (with a street value of approximately $200m) smuggled into the country in April, recommended that “a reasonably well-resourced Navy, and an equally well-resourced Air Force is necessary if the war against the drug trade is to succeed.”
It has further recommended “the examination of other viable options for marine and coastal patrol. An independent, well-resourced service, dedicated to marine and coastal patrol may prove a better way of ensuring the safety and security of the country’s territorial waters.”
Just last week, police in Guinea-Bissau seized 674 kg of cocaine in the tiny country’s biggest drugs haul and captured two suspected Venezuelan smugglers after a shoot-out, a top officer said.
Guinea-Bissau, with a population of less than 1.5 million, lies on the Atlantic coast of West Africa, a region drug enforcement officials say is increasingly used as a conduit for illegal narcotics destined for Europe.
The cocaine haul, with an estimated street value of $25.49 million, was the biggest quantity of drugs ever seized in Guinea-Bissau, Orlando Antonio Da Silva, director general of the judicial police, said.
Meanwhile, Quist said in Nairobi that in East Africa, Kenya has emerged as a growing transit region for international cocaine traffic.
Gideon Kibunja, a Kenya Police spokesperson, said authorities have boosted airport inspections since 2004, when 1.1 tonnes of cocaine was seized in Nairobi and the seaside town of Malindi.
It marked the largest seizure ever in the country.
Following the discovery, several Kenyan Airways staff members were arrested in London with quantities of cocaine, sparking concerns that the drug may have leaked into the international market.
African countries facing an influx of drugs include Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Senegal in West Africa and Ethiopia, Kenya, Botswana and Zambia in eastern and southern Africa. In South Africa, for example, there are up to 500,000 cocaine users in the country and one-third of its teenagers experiment with drugs, according to the South African Institute of International Affairs. The institute says there are up to 300 international crime syndicates, involved in drug trafficking, operating in the country.
Statistics show that cocaine is the major drug on the illicit traffic market in several African countries. In Zambia, for example, cocaine leads the drug market, and 80 percent of it is transported to Europe and 20 percent consumed locally, according to the country’s Drug Enforcement Commission spokesman Mukutulu Sinyani.
In 2005 Africa apparently accounted for 321,292 kg or 12 percent of world-wide cannabis seizures. Statistics reporting drug activity in many African countries, however, are not always consistent or reliable, sometimes creating the false notion that the drug problem is under control. In its annual report, the Geopolitical Drugs Watch, a non-governmental organisation based in France, reported that 24 kg of cocaine had been confiscated at the Abidjan airport during a 10-month period, but those seizures “are far from representing the actual scale of trafficking activities.”
Before the latest UN figures, statistics on Ghana were highly deceptive. Earlier figures from the UN International Drug Control Programme on Ghana were highly suspect during the earlier reporting period: cocaine seizures apparently rose from 7.3 kg in 1994 to 18.4 kg in 2004 before dropping to less than 1 kg in 2005.
Still, the drug problem does not arouse the same sense of urgency in the minds of most Africans as compared to people in developed countries in view of the relatively smaller size of the local drug market. In the US, for example, approximately 300 tonnes of cocaine enter the country each year.
According to UNDCP, the US illicit drug industry is estimated to be worth between $75 bn and $100 bn a year and there are some 12.8 million abusers. Those monetary figures dwarf the Gross Domestic Product of many developing countries.
What is overwhelmingly clear is that, the Illicit drug cultivation, processing, trafficking and abuse are on the rise in Africa. Although in global terms the problem is insignificant, it is threatening to add another impediment to the continent’s development efforts.
According to one analyst, if the trend continues, Africa could be faced with a major drug crisis. While the main drugs produced in Africa are cannabis and khat, narcotic drugs, specifically heroin and cocaine, are penetrating sub-Saharan Africa, which serves principally as a transit route between Asian suppliers and Western consumers.
A similar message was heard a week earlier at Rio de Janeiro, where international anti-drugs officials met. Ghana’s Inspector of Police, Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong was among the delegates.
“This is a phenomenon that worries us - countries that in the past were only used by major trafficking organisations as repositories or safe havens are seeing a spill-over effect,’ said Stephen Brown of the Drugs Intelligence Unit of Interpol, the international police organisation.
“Drugs are not only moving through these countries but staying there.”
He was speaking at Interpol’s annual general meeting, which brought together law enforcement officials from more than 150 countries in Rio de Janeiro – a city whose teeming slums are ruled by drugs traffickers.
The flow of cocaine from Latin America to West Africa, where it is moved on to Europe or Asia or kept for domestic consumption, had soared in the past five years.
“The levels have now reached multi-tonne shipments that are coming in regularly,” Mr Brown said.
Ten huge Latin American-African cocaine shipments had been intercepted in the past five years, including a recent record seizure of 14.2 tonnes coming from Peru, said Muazu Umaru, chief superintendent of the Nigerian anti-narcotics agency.
“We are not smiling because of that seizure – we are much more concerned,” Umaru said.
“Every country has the potential to be a trafficking country, then it’s only a matter of years before it develops into a user country,” Mr Brown said.
Until recently illicit drug use and trade in Africa was not of major regional or international concern. Illegal drug transiting surpasses other illegal trafficking across Africa and under-resourced customs officials achieve little in stemming the flow. In most countries of Africa, drug abuse appears to be rising, the age of initiation to drug abuse is falling and the number of women and children abusing drugs is growing.
Local and federal police joined forces to nab international heroin dealers who were smuggling dope from Ghana and Nigeria to Chicago in the lining of suitcases and by using human mules, according to a report in the Chicago Suntimes.
Federal charges against nine members of the international trafficking organisation were announced Friday by Chicago Police and federal law enforcement authorities.
Moshoodi E. Ajijola, 38, allegedly the head of the organisation, is among seven already in custody. Ajijola is suspected of importing pure heroin, which was then sold to local street gangs and customers as far away as Rockford, Minneapolis and St. Louis. The drugs also were turning up all over the city – from the far South Chicago Police District to the far north Rogers Park Police District.
The heroin was coming to Chicago and New York through India.
Police said Ajijola, who lived in the 6600 block of North Damen, and his associates were selling out of a building in the 800 block of Eastwood in the Uptown neighborhood.
The charges came after a six-month-long investigation, based largely on a Chicago Police officer’s ability to infiltrate the group, authorities said.
Agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Chicago field office also were involved in the case – which one Chicago Police official said involved some of the best local/federal cooperation ever. Because the defendants spoke four different languages, the case required a lot of translation work.
“It was a team effort – probably the best I have seen in 10 years of chasing dope,” said Chicago Police Lt. John Rowton.
All of the nine defendants face federal charges, which increase the penalties and is a tactic Chicago Police are employing more and more. Of the nine, two remained at large as of Friday.
