To analyse
Drugs: what impact on political stability in West Africa?
Seizure of cocaine in Benin.
DEA
Text by: Sabine Cessou Follow
6 mins
Drug trafficking continues to grow in West Africa, where 14.2 tonnes of cocaine were seized each year on average between 2019 and 2022, compared to 5.5 tonnes for 2007 alone. A colossal source of corruption, the Latin American cartels have become ubiquitous.
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Knowing that it is necessary to
multiply by 20
the seizures made to have an idea of the real traffic, approximately 1,140 tons of cocaine have transited since 2019 through West Africa.
That is a market value of 57 billion euros, each gram being sold for 50 euros in the cities of Europe.
In other words, over the past four years, annual cocaine trafficking has represented half of Senegal's GDP, nearly all of Niger's or Guinea's GDP, and almost ten times that of Guinea-Bissau.
This Portuguese-speaking state has become a textbook case of a country plagued by narcos.
Despite the attempted responses by the Community of West African States (ECOWAS), there remains a
wide open gateway
for cocaine produced in Latin America.
The consequences are very direct on the political stability of the country.
An assault was given on February 1, 2022 at the government palace where a Council of Ministers was held.
The
coup attempt
killed 11 people and was denounced by President Umaro Sissoco Embalo as being linked to drug trafficking.
"
Main activity of the military elite in Bissau
"
In what precisely?
The president
accused three men,
including ex-Naval chief Bubo Na Tchuto, arrested in 2013 by the US
Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA), which considers him a drug lord.
He was again arrested in Bissau.
While a
study by the Canadian University
of Usherbrooke
claims that narcotics have become the "
main economic activity of the country's military elite
“, the detractors of the head of state, who is himself a former general, recall that he was close to Antonio Indjai, author in 2012 of the so-called “cocaine” coup.
This putsch had allowed officers to dismiss a civilian Prime Minister, Carlos Gomes Junior, who was then trying to contain them, in order to regain control of the traffic.
Today, the drugs seized are evaporating in large quantities.
Seven suspects appeared in court in Bissau last February, after a seizure of 980 kg of cocaine incriminating three Colombians, a Mexican, a Malian and seven Bissau-Guineans.
Of this total, “
975 kg have purely and simply disappeared into nature,
explained Domingos Monteiro, the director of the judicial police.
It is presumed that it was elements of the security and defense forces who seized it
”.
Narcoterrorism in Mali
Guinea-Bissau is only a stage on the road to the cartels.
In 2008,
the UNODC
already reported that "
most cocaine from South America lands by boat in northern Guinea-Bissau and southern Ghana
", before being sent to France, the United States.
Spain and the United Kingdom by plane, on commercial flights,
via
"mules" or smugglers from Guinea Conakry, Mali, Nigeria and Senegal, ready to swallow pellets of cocaine.
Contraband also goes up by road
via
Mali, Niger and Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean by boat.
Gambia, Guinea, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin… Trafficking
no longer spares any West African coastal country,
contrary to what the polarization over the case of Mali might have led one to believe.
The West African Commission on Drugs (WACD), launched in 2013 by Kofi Annan, also believes that it can "
prove dangerous to exaggerate the threat of narcoterrorism
", in which armed Islamist groups are involved levy rights of way, of course, but also "
members of the political class and business circles in northern Mali
".
"
Very large sums in the hands of political actors
"
What about Bamako?
The traffic grew in the 2000s under the presidency of Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT), as evidenced by the “Air Cocaïne” affair, the nickname given to the wreckage of a Boeing 727 found in 2009 in the middle of the desert.
The plane, rented in Venezuela, flew under a Bissau-Guinean license between Colombia and Mali.
The
WikiLeaks revelations
indicated in 2011 that civil aviation such as the narcotics brigade in Mali were excluded from the investigation by the executive, which also refused to share its information with UNODC, the UN agency in the fight against drugs and crime.
It is difficult to get a clear idea of the political consequences of the current state of the traffic, insofar as the UNODC no longer gives details by country in its reports.
The Intergovernmental Action Group against Money Laundering in West Africa (GIABA), quoted by a
WADC report
, mentions for its part "
very large sums of money that fall into the hands of important political actors
", without naming names.
A WADC member quoted by
Deutsche Welle
claims to have “
documented evidence that politicians in the sub-region are involved.
There are even some who have financed their electoral campaigns with this money
”.
Rising tide of white powder
Cape Verde, on the other hand, does not let it go.
It sets itself up as a fairly isolated counter-example for its fight against narcos, which have been ubiquitous since the 2000s. Record seizures (16.6 tonnes between 2019 and 2022) are made in this Portuguese-speaking archipelago, stable, sparsely populated and accustomed to democratic alternations.
They indicate both the high level of trafficking and the political will deployed to curb it.
This does not prevent the money from being laundered with a vengeance, and the rising tide of white powder from increasing local consumption – as in Conakry, Abidjan or Dakar.
The omerta prevails in Cape Verde, the rare voices which rise exposing themselves to reprisals.
"
In 2014, the mother of a narcotics investigator was murdered, and the Prime Minister's son was injured in a shooting a few months later
," said
Mouhamadou Kane,
consultant-researcher for the
Enhancing Africa's Response project.
to Transnational Organized Crime
(ENACT) in Dakar.
The authorities in Praia nonetheless remain determined.
A five-year plan to fight organized crime was launched in 2018 with the support of Portugal, the United States and France.
The only problem: it requires financing of around 6 million euros, which remains difficult to find.
This amount (0.01% of the market value of the volumes of cocaine transiting through West Africa) reflects an impressive inequality of means between the cartels and the States.
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