CIAO DATE: 06/2011
March 2011
Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre
This paper analyses the international, West African and national conditions that fuel the spread of the international drugs trade in West Africa, particularly in Guinea-Bissau, and examines the impact of the international cocaine trade at a social, economic and governance level in this small West African country. Although drug trafficking has a long history in West Africa, over the past five years the region has increasingly attracted international attention as a new hub for the illicit cocaine trade between Latin America and Europe. In the case of Guinea-Bissau, that attention has been all the greater for a number of reasons: a) the visibility of the authorities’ involvement in trafficking, causing international agencies and the media to dub it the “world’s first narco-state”; b) the amount of drugs seized on its territory and the increasing presence of South Americans, to whom this type of activity is attributed; and lastly c) because the country is totally dependent on aid and uses the media attention given to drug trafficking as an argument for keeping aid flowing into the country. Following significant seizures of cocaine in 2006 and 2007, the trade appeared to go into decline in 2008 and 2009, for which the authors outline four possible scenarios, the most likely being that it is continuing but through the employment of other less visible methods, with the traffickers having made only a temporary tactical retreat.
Resource link: The international cocaine trade in Guinea-Bissau: current trends and risks [PDF] - 1.9M