Gernot Klantschnig

Histories of Cannabis Use and Control in Nigeria, 1927–1967

Much of the available research on illegal drugs, such as cannabis, heroin, or cocaine, has shown a weak understanding of the drugs’historical roots in Africa and the domestic meanings of these substances and their control. This has been a result of a lack of openly available sources on these substances and also because much of this work has been conducted by international control agencies or researchers working closely with them and hence research has often served an immediate policy purpose rather than a better historical understanding of drugs.1

The politics of law enforcement in Nigeria: lessons from the war on drugs

This article examines the institutional politics of law enforcement in Nigeria by focusing on illegal drug control since the mid 1980s. It assesses the available academic research on law enforcement governance, and contrasts it with an in-depth case study of drug law enforcement. The case study confirms views of the politicised nature of law enforcement. However, it goes beyond the patron–client centred approach to politics prevalent in the literature on African policing. The article adds an institutional dimension to the study of law enforcement governance, highlighting processes of centralisation, exclusion and shifting bureaucratic interests that have been central to the development of Nigerian drug law enforcement. It is based on previously inaccessible data from inside Nigerian drug law enforcement.

Illicit livelihoods: drug crops and development in Africa

This article assesses the impact of drugs on agricultural production, trade and livelihoods more broadly by focusing on cannabis and khat in Lesotho, Nigeria and Kenya. It actively engages with research that has recently begun to explore the links between drugs and development in Africa and challenges some of its key assumptions. It argues that based on the available empirical evidence, the causalities between drugs and underdevelopment are not apparent. It proposes a more nuanced understanding of the impact of cannabis and khat, showing how they have provided farmers and entrepreneurs with opportunities not readily available in difficult economic environments.

West Africa's drug trade: reasons for concern and hope

West Africa has recently emerged as a major focus for international drug policy, mainly in response to largescale cocaine seizures in West Africa, from where drugs are transhipped to European and American consumer markets [1]. International policy responses have concentrated on strengthening the criminal justice system, particularly the interdiction of drugs at West African airand seaports. However, limited data exist regarding the rates of local drug use in West Africa, and public health initiatives related to treatment have been sidelined.

Quasilegality: Khat, Cannabis and Africa’s Drug Laws

Abstract This article explores the concept of ‘quasilegality’ in relation to two of Africa’s drug crops: khat and cannabis. It argues that the concept is useful in understanding the two substances and their ambiguous relation to the statute books: khat being of varied and ever-changing legal status yet often treated with suspicion even where legal, while cannabis is illegal everywhere in Africa yet often seems de facto legal. The article argues that such quasilegality is socially significant and productive, raising the value of such crops for farmers and traders, but also allowing states to police or not police these substances as their interests and instincts dictate. It also argues that there is no clear link between the law on the statute book and the actual harm potential of these substances. Finally, it suggests that the concept has much wider use beyond these case studies of drugs in Africa in a world where global consensus on drug policy is cracking, and where many other objects of trade and activities find themselves in the blurred territory of the quasilegal.

Africa and the drugs trade revisited

In the 1990s Africa, once again, became ‘a new frontier’ – this time for the global war on drugs. Recognising the significance of the continent’s immersion in the global drug trade, this journal dedicated a pioneering special issue to the matter in 1999 (Vol. 26, No. 79). The previous year, the UN had held its General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) and published its first major report on drugs in Africa (UNDCP 1999). ROAPE’s focus on the drugs trade grew out of these initiatives at the time. The next UNGASS took place this year, in April 2016, against the backdrop of accelerating global drug policy reforms and the expansion and transformation of drug markets throughout Africa. The role of developing countries in policing drugs, but also in informing and shaping broader policy, added both depth and dilemmas in the run-up to the deliberations in New York. Seizing this opportune moment to present and discuss new research from across the continent, this special issue revisits some of the themes explored in 1999 and introduces new findings and avenues for research. Intended to dispel myths about Africa’s ‘drug problem’, contributors aim to steer both the academic and policymaking debate towards issues emerging from empirical findings in a variety of country contexts. The parameters of the continent’s involvement in the production, sale and consumption of (illicit) drugs have been subject to a number of notable changes since ROAPE’s first special issue on the topic. National policing bodies such as Nigeria’s National Drug Law Enforcement Agency have expanded their capacity, often with the assistance of external donors. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has opened offices in Lagos, Accra, Nairobi and Pretoria, and actively seeks to collaborate with local authorities. A multinational maritime task force is now policing the Indian Ocean and making record seizures, such as the more than 1.5 tonnes of heroin intercepted off the coast of Kenya and Tanzania in 2015 alone (CMF 2015a, 2015b). As a result, trafficking routes have evolved to evade intensifying policing. Consumption patterns on the continent have also changed. New drugs, such as methamphetamines, are sold and even produced in a number of African countries (Mark 2013). Substances previously confined to metropolitan areas are now trickling into rural areas (Syvertsen et al. 2016). In April 2015, Pierre Lapaque, the West and Central Africa representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), described the continent as ‘the market of the future for illegal drugs’ (Bouchaud 2015). Today drug consumption, trade and production in Africa is the subject of a special commission headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and discussed by media and policymakers in almost every African country (WACD 2014). The fact that the African Union has developed two Plans of Action on Drug Control and Crime Prevention – for 2007–2012 and for 2013– 2018 – is indicative of the continental scale of the phenomenon. However, statements like Lapaque’s convey an image of a sudden crisis that fits neatly into the broader rhetoric of the global drug prohibition regime. It also resonates with Africa-specific narratives of terrorism, corruption and state ‘failure’, which have captivated a range of audiences in the past decade and a half.

International Development and the Global Drugs Trade

This chapter assesses the links between illicit drugs and development, focussing on cannabis and khat in African countries. We suggest that a received wisdom that ascribes a negative effect to all such substances and their trade should be critiqued. While highlighting the very real threat these substances can have, we argue that based on the available empirical evidence, the causalities between drugs and underdevelopment are not always apparent. We propose a more nuanced understanding of the economic impact of drugs showing how—in certain contexts—drugs have provided farmers and entrepreneurs with opportunities not readily available in difficult economic environments. Finally, we question whether the drugs themselves or the policy designed to stop them are most harmful.

Chinese and African Perspectives on China in Africa

Particularly in those most painful and uncomfortable moments, such as washing a decomposing body, surmounting one’s discomfort is not about pollution, as Mary Douglas once argued, but rather about embracing these social relations. Not only can an ethnography of touch powerfully focus our attention on the practices and “everyday rituals” that create and re-create social relations and foster growth, but it can also highlight crucial linkages between domains of life that anthropologists, historians, and geographers frequently address in isolation – sickness, nursing and care, on the one hand, and inheritance, farming, and land on the other. Thus the “loss” with which Uhero people now live is not exclusively about “the death of today”, the depletion of lands once controlled by particular lineages, or of the stymied ability to “grow” one’s home in particular ways; it is all of these things, and much more. Some African societies now reflect on their pasts and present in terms of loss, but Geissler and Prince’s approach conveys more precise insight into how one community characterizes and lives with it. Written with compelling detail, exceptional sensitivity, and thorough theoretical grounding, The Land is Dying merits wide readership. I hope it might also galvanize social scientists working in Africa and beyond to reflect upon the nature of touch, and to consider how, in other contexts, it may figure in the creation and disruption of social relations and conceptions of crisis and loss.