Africa is fast becoming a dangerous meeting ground and throughroute for the drugs trade, crime and terrorism, according to the United Nations' drugs agency, the UNODC.

Spokesman Walter Kemp told Radio Netherlands Worldwide that while cocaine is known to have been moving through West Africa in recent years, the routes are shifting further north.

Listen to the Newsline interview with Walter Kemp

“Trafficking is moving up towards the Sahel region and even into the Maghreb. You’ve got Tuareg groups there, some of which are against the government. You’ve got al-Qaeda in the Maghreb and there’s now also evidence of drugs trafficking into that region, so this is potentially a very dangerous nexus of drugs, crime and terrorism.”

Findings delivered yesterday to the UN Security Council by UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa indicate that heroin and cocaine are being traded in vast amounts to fund international terror groups and anti-government forces.

Africa is a central hub, with between 50 and 60 tonnes of cocaine coming into the west of the continent from South America every year, and 30 to 35 tonnes of heroin to the east from Afghanistan.

Path of least resistance
West Africa became a hub because the traditional trading routes have become too risky for traffickers, says Mr Kemp, who adds that the Sahel, an arid band of land south of the Sahara (Wikimedia map) that stretches across northern Africa, has proved to be a new path of least resistance.

“It’s a poor region, with weak governance. It’s difficult to control airspace and ports. As a result, cocaine smuggling through the region in the last five years has grown exponentially.”

Heroin from Afghanistan is also making its way into East Africa, partly because of the collapse of Somalia, while Guinea Bissau in the west has also become a major hub, the UNODC reports. Mr Kemp says that creates a worrying cocktail.

“The trafficking routes east and west might be meeting in the Sahel region… our concern is that drugs are a new currency being used to trade for weapons and that mixture of insurgency, trafficking and terrorism has potentially dangerous consequences.”

Cross-border cooperation
The UNODC is calling for trans-Saharan cooperation to help beat the trade of illegal drugs. It is also trying to reduce levels of drug taking around the world by improving prevention and treatment, while also trying to tackle supply by eradicating poverty in the places that the drugs are grown such as Afghanistan.

While the UNODC reported that poppy cultivation and opium production in Afghanistan have decreased sharply this year, statistics indicate that the battle against the production of drugs may be hard won.

Growing addiction levels
Levels of addiction and drug abuse are soaring in Africa in keeping with the increase in trafficking and over the last ten years, global supplies of opium and heroin have gone from 4,000 to 8,000 tonnes.

Efforts to reduce cocaine use in Europe have had little effect, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), while cocaine use globally remains steady.

The manufacture of synthetic drugs like ecstasy or methamphetamine ('crystal meth') continues to rise, as production shifts steadily to the developing world, according to the UNODC.