In Botswana, activists are up in arms over regulations that exclude and sideline the majority. In Namibia, colonial-era blanket prohibition continues to marginalise a centuries-old cannabis culture to deny the indigenous invaluable food rights. In Malawi, cannabis authorities are incapable of leveraging their world-famous Malawi Gold brand into anything meaningful.
Apart from South Africa which is developing a local cannabis market – albeit rather haphazardly – no African government has seriously examined policies that would harness the energy of their citizens in developing domestic cannabis economies. At the heart of this is their reluctance to accept the reality that millions of Africans consume cannabis, sustaining illicit markets that are increasingly being taken over by organized crime.
Meanwhile, South Africa sits in legislative limbo: personal consumption is okay while trade is criminalised. This arcane provision is part of impractical regulations that have failed poorer rural and township stakeholders at the edge of opportunity from participating in the value chain.
African governments just don’t seem to get the ‘people-plant’ relationship
No wonder researchers criticise African governments’ piecemeal cannabis regulatory approaches and prescribe holistic practices in their place. As Western Cape PhD researcher Kelly Fortune puts it, what’s often missing in the continent’s legislative regimes is a people-plant relationship.
“While regulations have been open for public comment, it falls short of considering a whole of society approach to cannabis regulation. It appears to follow a ‘copy paste’ approach based on global regulations that seemingly fail to consider the South African context – that in itself is quite diverse,” says Fortune.
Her analysis is relevant to other African country contexts: unnecessary cannabis restrictions have proved the enemy of social inclusion, economic emancipation and more basically, much-need nutrition from hemp.
Fortune is part of the joint Universities of Cape Town and Bristol Cannabis Africana Project which explores the relationship between cannabis, cannabis policy and livelihoods in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Nigeria.
“At present regulations appear to be a tick box exercise in response to the provisions in the Cannabis for Private Purposes Act of 2024, lacking clarity and practicality, impeding human rights and freedom of choice,” she says of the South African legislation.
Let’s just call it: African leaders do not want to empower their people through cannabis
The irony is that the regulatory structures of ‘cannabis friendly’ countries like Botswana, Lesotho, Zambia and Zambia, which have legislated for medicinal and industrial cannabis use on the promise that it would emancipate the majority poor, have become the stumbling block to that emancipation. Hence South Africa’s leading activist Ras Gareth Prince is back in court to ensure the gains of the 2018 personal use victory get some teeth.
“The aspirations of reform are at risk when done in isolation and from the proverbial ‘ivory tower’ by policymakers who appear to have limited knowledge and are largely disconnected from the local realities” says Fortune.
“It is these very policymakers who have been drafting policy that leaves behind those mostly impacted -the people who use cannabis”.
Fortune points out that cannabis is consumed at ‘various levels’ – medicinal, spiritual, recreational and that there are rural farmers and indigenous knowledge systems that are part of the package.
“It is these voices that will be pertinent to surface and where my research finds expression, specifically endeavouring to centre the voice of cannabis consumers – so as to inform a more holistic debate.”
Fortune says the Fields of Green for All (FGFA) Police Reform workshop held at the end of February 2026 at Constitution Hill is crucial in this regard. The workshop was important in that the ‘shared insights’ provided depth to how engagements with the police will unfold.
“These insights provided a useful framework to enable maximising engagements with the police following a collaborative approach towards improving systems that hold people and human rights at the centre.”
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