The East and South African Commission on Drugs (ESACD) reports that the entire coastline of eastern and southern Africa and the Indian Ocean islands have now been integrated into international supply routes.

South Africa is a key hub for transnational crime, prompting a visit by Interpol secretary general and his team to see how cross-border smuggling can be combated. Of particular interest are the sea routes used to smuggle narcotics from South America and Asia to Europe and Australasia where consumption is booming.

The EACD’s Maritime Smuggling Report published last August reveals the extent of the problem that Interpol is dealing with:

The information below is drawn directly from the report: Maritime-based Drug Smuggling in East and Southern Africa.

Cannabis and Khat

Cannabis, a non-native plant imported from Asia to East Africa via Indian Ocean trade networks, has a long history of production and use extending as far back as the 14th century.

The African continent has some of the highest levels of cannabis production in the world, accounting for around 25% of the global total. Much of this production is consumed on the continent.

Cannabis is the most commonly used and traded drug in Africa with an estimated 38.2 million consumers, compared to the 5 to 10 million consumers of khat. It is a product of cultural practices, a medicinal herb used by traditional healers, and a key livelihood crop (like khat) for poor farmers.

Although grown in significant amounts in each of the region’s countries, local demand for cannabis still regularly exceeds supply in each country’s domestic drug market, with only two exceptions:

• Madagascar, which is the bulk cannabis exporter by sea among the Indian Ocean islands, and, in a far more recent phenomenon,

• Réunion, which exports smaller volumes almost exclusively to Mauritius.

Cannabis is also widely grown in volume in northern Tanzania, as well as Uganda, Eswatini and Zambia. Whilst much is for local consumption, there is growing evidence of maritime-based exportation within the region.

Khat has been called the ‘archetypal quasi-legal substance’. A plant indigenous to Eastern and Southern Africa, it contains the psychoactive alkaloids cathine and cathinone and has been used as a recreational stimulant in Ethiopia and Yemen since the 12th century.

While its active alkaloids have been listed under international control, unlike cannabis, the coca leaf and the opium poppy, its plant matter is not likewise listed. The incongruent nature of its scheduling has contributed to khat’s classification status straddling the boundaries of both the legal and illegal markets of the region.

Methamphetamine and other synthetics

Crystal methamphetamine is available for retail purchase and use in every eastern southern African country and is manufactured in the region in rapidly increasing volumes for both domestic consumption and sale into international supply chains.

In early 2020, the trafficking of Afghan-produced methamphetamine was detected alongside Afghan heroin in dhow shipments along the Swahili coast into the Mozambique Channel.

This Afghan origin meth flow had gone completely undetected through the region for over a year before its eventual identification.

This dual traffic has been confirmed through the traditional Makran coast maritime routings to Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa, moving inland to supply domestic markets in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Ephedra-based, of high purity and quality, and flowing in significant volume, this new supply chain is becoming an increasingly significant competitor to existing Nigerian and South African production chains and is contributing to an increase in use across the region.

Interviews also point to a small but growing supply chain of Mexican-based meth transiting with established maritime cocaine shipments via Brazil and feeding the South African market. Among other synthetic compounds, synthetic cannabinoids, which arrived in the region between 2011 and 2013, pose a growing risk.

By 2015, these new synthetic compounds had drastically changed the illicit drugs markets of the Comoros and Mauritius, quickly becoming a priority public health concern.

In contrast, usage is low but increasing in the Seychelles, Madagascar and the continental mainland countries. Synthetic cannabinoid compounds and their precursors are imported directly into Mauritius and Mayotte, while in the Comoros these imports are predominantly transit flows arriving from Mayotte.

Significant overspill of synthetic cannabinoid supply chains and use to other Indian Ocean islands and, most specifically to the larger consumer markets of the continental mainland, is highly likely.

The movement of myriad other synthetic substances including methcathinone (‘cat’), methaqualone (‘mandrax’), MDMA (‘ecstasy’) and diverted pharmaceuticals (e.g. Tramadol) are also being traced at sea in the region, although they are not nearly as widely available or used as cannabis, heroin, cocaine and meth.

Alongside meth, South Africa is also a cornerstone production location for cat, mandrax and MDMA. 

Precursors for their synthesis are sourced from production points in both India and China, and arrive by ship through the ports of Durban, Gqeberha and Cape Town in South Africa, and Walvis Bay in Namibia. 

Precursors are imported also through grey channels created by the diversion of licitly-procured chemicals that are then diverted to illicit supply chains, often with the assistance of complicit, corrupted or compromised government and private sector officials. 

This is done via enterprises in South Africa, but also allegedly via grey market entities in the neighbouring countries of Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Zambia and Namibia. In fact, the trade in precursor chemicals is widespread across the continent, likely generating a wealth of easily accessible sources of precursors.

Cocaine

Increasing volumes of cocaine are arriving from South America in Kenya, South Africa and Mozambique concealed in container vessels or transferred at sea from a ‘mothership’ in international waters to smaller local vessels for ferrying to shore.

In most cases, once ashore much of this cocaine is redistributed and transported to transit points inland before it is shipped onwards.

The growing transit of cocaine through eastern Southern Africa has contributed also to increases in the availability and use of cocaine in local drug markets.

Growing volumes are remaining in the region to fuel rapidly expanding domestic cocaine consumption markets in South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.

Yet the region is also a transit depot for the movement of cocaine to destination markets beyond, including to the European Union (EU) via both sea and air-based routings, as well as onward transit for consumption in East Asia (e.g. China, Japan), Australia and New Zealand.

Heroin

Mauritius and the Seychelles, which are afflicted by some of the highest rates of heroin use in the world, operate as the principal consumer markets for heroin in the region alongside the coastal states of Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.

Consumption in Mauritius and the Seychelles is not just the result of overspill from the southern route; rather, both these island states have been targeted by traffickers because of their comparative wealth. 

The dynamics of accelerating consumption in the Seychelles and Mauritius can thus be distinguished from the coastal transit states of the East African coastline, where domestic heroin markets developed predominantly through overspill from principal flows.

Madagascar is emerging as a significant transhipment hub in both regional and international heroin markets. Trafficking through the country has grown significantly over the past five years. Madagascar has emerged to play an increasingly prominent role as a repackaging and redistribution breakbulk hub. Heroin is trafficked by sea from a range of points along the East African coastline, particularly Tanzania (Dar es Salam, Zanzibar) and Mozambique (Pemba) to Mauritius, the Seychelles and Madagascar.

In South Africa, competition among domestic gangs around heroin distribution supply chains and territories – particularly in and around the port city of Cape Town – continues to contribute to significant violence and instability.

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