Is West Africa gaining notoriety in the global cocaine trade?
Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, Ghanadot

Accra, May 27, Ghanadot - West Africa, now the most peaceful and united sub-region on the African continent is battling feverishly with the world’s most dreaded trade; the cocaine business.

Latest statistics released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) revealed that at least 50 tonnes of cocaine from Latin America enter West Africa annually, en route to Europe, netting almost $2billion for the drug smugglers.

The value of this illicit trade dwarfs entire economies of the region and has the potential to corrupt the region's fragile states, which are just pulling out of decades of bitter civil wars.

In the past Africa has been a treasure trove for looting by covetous colonialists, voracious rebels and kleptocratic rulers -- over the last 300 years think slaves, ivory, gold, diamonds, tin and coltan. Now it is becoming a transit point and storeroom for the cocaine trade.

South American cartels used to transport cocaine to the big U.S. market via the Caribbean. But dwindling American consumption, stricter control of the West Indies drugs route, growing cocaine use in Europe and weak law enforcement in West Africa have conspired to bring the drug to the region. It is the path of least resistance.

Grown and processed in South America, the refined cocaine is transported by boat or plane across the Atlantic: The shortest line of travel brings the cargo straight to West Africa. From there the cartels move the drugs onwards to Europe, along the way paying off West African officials in order to be able to operate freely.

The cocaine consignments can also be moved by corrupt officials in the army, customs and police forces. The packages are split up and distributed by criminal gangs who use boats, trucks, planes or human mules to transport the drugs to Europe, which is in the throes of a cocaine boom reminiscent of the U.S. in the 1980s.

Several West African countries risk becoming narco-states -- undermined by drug money their nascent institutions become stillborn. This is a global concern because this part of Africa provides resources that the world depends on, including oil. The U.S. gets almost one-fifth of its crude from Africa.

"Already we have seen how the impact of drugs has affected the judiciary, the police, customs and political parties," says Kwesi Aning at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra. He says Ghana and Guinea-Bissau are the two main cocaine hubs in West Africa.

Aning says the drug trade is a threat to Ghana, which currently is an oasis of political and economic stability in a volatile region.

Individual shipments of hundreds of kilos of cocaine have been found in recent years in Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Sierra Leone and elsewhere. But the seizures are more the product of luck than design, and prosecutions rarely follow.

Traffickers are frequently released for lack of evidence or jump bail, while hauls of cocaine locked in secure storage rooms disappear and senior officials implicated in the trade hold onto their jobs and buy flashy new SUVs to navigate their capitals' potholed streets. Ghana is a pointer to example as in 2008, about hundreds parcel of cocaine put in the storeroom of the Ghana Police Service vanished into thin air with no security agent arrested for the crime.

The U.N. reckons that the traffickers might make $450 million each year, which would mean that the criminals have more financial resources than the states in which they operate. A policeman earning less than $50 a month is easily bribed, so is a customs official, a security agent or even a government minister.

Another cocaine coast in the West African sub-region is Sierra Leone, where millions of dollars earned from the sale of "blood diamonds" -- another illegal trade -- helped prolong a civil war, leaving the country in bloody ruin when the fighting stopped in 2003.

The death of Guinea's elderly president, Lansana Conte, in late December 2008 sent shivers down the spines of drugs experts who fear a large failed state in the region will only encourage the cartels.

The cocaine threat is growing, but security experts say it is not too late for concerted international action.

"We can break the back of this crisis, but we don't have much time," warns Aning. "We need to do this within the next two years otherwise ..." And with that he shakes his head.

The cocaine trade is a good business in all the West African countries with some playing leading roles.

In Ghana just last week, the security agencies including the Ghana Police Service, Narcotic Control Board and the Custom, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) busted 61 parcels of cocaine at the Tema Harbour which were to be transported into the western world.

Although, there are a lot of arrests of smugglers and other cocaine users in the country the trade seems to be booming.

However, the President of Ghana, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, early this month expressed delight over the reported shortage of cocaine, saying the anti-drug measures put out by his government to track drug trafficking are working.

According to him, the government remains resolute in stopping people from using Ghana as a transit corridor for hard drugs, adding that government would ensure that the situation moved from shortage to the total eradication of hard drugs like cocaine in the country.

To further fight the cocaine trade menace, the government of Ghana is spending a total of over 157,223,942 Ghana cedis to implement various activities to kill the trade.

Also, the Narcotic Control Board (NACOB), Ghana’s anti-narcotic agency will be restructured to respond to the challenging demand of the current drug problems in the country and the sub-region at large.

The Board will intensify its preventive and educational programmes through educational tours and sensitization programmes targeting the general public especially schools, churches, mosques, transport associations, amongst others.

This will be undertaken through the formation of Drug-Free Clubs in second cycle schools and organization of trainer of trainers’ workshop for School Health Educational Programme coordinators of the Ghana Education Service.

There will be strenuous efforts to strengthen the sharing of intelligence within the West Africa sub-region under the Global Container Project at the country’s Tema Harbour.

Furthermore, arrangements have been made to decentralize three regional offices namely, Kumasi, Takoradi, and Tamale all in the Ashanti, Western and the Northern regions respectively as well as open offices at the two hotspots areas (Aflao and Elubo) and equip the offices with personnel, computers, vehicles and other equipment to deal with the cocaine trade in the West African Sub-Region.

Ghanadot