The new drug routes

The drug market moves like a magma in search of new routes, consumers, profits.

Africa is not exempt from the phenomenon, indeed, it is since the early 2000s that the contrast to the Caribbean (cocaine) and Pakistani (heroin) routes led traffickers to move their traffics to Africa (and then to Africa). Europe). The major global criminal organizations have found in the Continent, the researchers of the Center for International Studies, "both an expanding market, due to the growth of local drug consumption, and a pool of sufficiently specialized underworld manpower able to guarantee relative displacement. safe from narcotics. In this context, the coasts and ports of West Africa have become nerve centers of the transatlantic trade in drugs, especially cocaine, originating in South America and which, through this route, reaches Africa and then Europe ". It is a continuum that starts from small organized criminal groups structured in large and fluid networks, to medium-small criminal groups up to organizations structured in real mafias.

Then there is the specific of the Sahel where there is an overlap between jihadist or insurgent organizations and criminal organizations. Important drug displacements are also reported on the eastern side of Africa. It was already understood 20 years ago during a research in the Kenyan slum of Korogocho conducted by Luca Clochiatti and the Comboni missionaries who had certified the presence of more than 20 types of drugs (cannabis, miraa, cocaine, heroin, glue, mandrax .. .) many at very low cost (10/20 cents): it was the signal that Kenya was no longer just a transit area, but could become a place of consumption: and so it was. According to Unodc estimates, about 42 tons of heroin transit in Kenya increasingly directed towards local consumers which would have doubled in the last 3 years.

This year, the Report on the international narcotics control strategy highlighted the centrality of the southern Indian Ocean routes that land in the ports of Kenya and Tanzania. In the latter country, 300 kilos of heroin were seized last April and 5 tons of marijuana in August 2020. There is the problem of corruption, but according to the INCSR Report it is at low levels. In fact, "the Kenyan government, the researchers point out, has made some efforts to combat the problem, including continuous support for the Internal Affairs Unit of the National Police Service, which deals with drugs, corruption in the police ranks". As they say in Kenya penye nia ipo njia, if there is the will to fight drug trafficking, there is also a means.

Fabrizio Floris
NP October 2021