People have been growing cannabis in Africa for centuries, and now legal cannabis production has taken hold in some countries on the continent \u2014 with several more anticipating an embrace of the new industry on the horizon. Overseas investment is coming in, and recent media reports predict an African cannabis boom in 2020.<\/p>\n
The UN Office on Drugs & Crime in its 2007 overview report\u00a0Cannabis in Africa<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>estimated 10,000 tons of cannabis were produced annually on the continent, entirely on the underground market.<\/p>\n Today, there are now four legal producers in Africa that are now looking to legalize the thriving underground economy. Far in the lead is South Africa\u2019s small and landlocked neighbor, Lesotho. Long a major illicit producer, Lesotho is now\u00a0aggressively embracing commercial cannabis production<\/a>\u00a0as a ticket out of poverty and under-development. In 2017, it issued Africa\u2019s first commercial cultivation licenses, again for the international medical market. Investment has since poured in.<\/p>\n In 2018, South Africa\u00a0decriminalized personal cultivation<\/a>\u00a0via a judicial ruling. That same year, the South Africa Health Products Regulatory Authority issued the first licenses for commercial cultivation of medical marijuana \u2014 now\u00a0numbering four in all<\/a>. In May 2019, South Africa\u2019s health agency\u00a0rescheduled CBD<\/a>, clearing the way for the free sale of CBD extract and derivatives in the lead.<\/p>\n Things have moved much more slowly in traditionally authoritarian Zimbabwe, which also\u00a0legalized medical marijuana cultivation<\/a>\u00a0in 2018, by order of the Health Ministry. The last entry is Uganda, where\u00a0plans for commercial cultivation<\/a>\u00a0were held up by demands from conservative cabinet members for a legal review earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Progress is also reported from Malawi, where\u00a0the government is now cultivating hemp<\/a>\u00a0on a trial basis, with an eye toward permitting the production of CBD strains. And Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland), another small land-locked neighbor of South Africa, is following Lesotho into a legal cannabis economy, with a\u00a0bill or legalize cultivation now pending<\/a>.<\/p>\n The legal logjam halting cannabis cultivation in Uganda appears to have just broken. A report in\u00a0Taarifa Rwanda<\/a>\u00a0indicates the first licenses in Uganda have been approved, with 7,000 hectares now under cannabis cultivation. Among the biggest of 90 firms under license in Uganda is the Israeli company\u00a0Together Pharma<\/a>, which intends to export to Canada. \u00a0<\/p>\n With a handful of countries moving towards legalization and a flood of international investment hitting Africa\u2019s shores, many media outlets have taken note and started to speculate that 2020 could be a big year for African cannabis.<\/p>\n \u201cWith Israel as partner, Africa can turn cannabis into an economic game changer,\u201d read a bullish write-up in the\u00a0Times of Israel<\/a>\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n \u201cWith abundant land, an experienced labor force and climates conducive to cannabis cultivation, if legitimized, cannabis could contribute to a continent-wide economic uptick,\u201d the Times of Israel wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Dec. 19, the\u00a0Bloomberg<\/a>\u00a0news agency offered a similarly bullish report on the cannabis boom in Lesotho. It notes that since the landlocked kingdom became the first African country to issue cannabis cultivation licenses, foreign investors including Canadian companies\u00a0Supreme Cannabis<\/a>,\u00a0Canopy Growth<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Aphria<\/a>\u00a0have \u201cpoured tens of millions of dollars into a handful of facilities, drawn by the low cost of production.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n MG Health<\/a>, Lesotho\u2019s biggest legal producer, received $10 million Canadian dollars ($7.6 million dollars) from Supreme Cannabis last year in exchange for 10% of the business, which was then known as Medigrow Lesotho. MG Health CEO Andre Bothma told Bloomberg the company plans to employ as many as 3,000 workers locally once it reaches full production in a few years \u2014 up from 350 currently. It is now growing a CBD strain, and primarily exporting extract to South Africa, although Bothma said the company also anticipates entering European markets.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have first-mover advantage in Africa and we think the market is huge,\u201d the CEO added.<\/p>\n The Bloomberg account emphasized one particular lure of production in Africa: low overhead.<\/p>\n \u201cAs cannabis rules loosen around the globe, companies are turning to low-cost regions for supply,\u201d Bloomberg wrote. \u201cMG Health says that even in its start-up phase, it\u2019s producing in Lesotho for about 93 cents a gram, less than the $1 or more per gram that it cites as the norm elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Low production costs have long been a stimulus behind foreign-backed plantation agriculture in Africa \u2014 as has\u00a0land-grabbing<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Earlier this year, UK-based cannabis industry consultancy\u00a0Prohibition Partners<\/a>\u00a0released its\u00a0African Cannabis Report<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>emphasizing a refrain also oft-heard from agribusiness, oil and mineral interests: Africa holds great potential, but \u201cinfrastructure and facilities are lacking,\u201d so \u201cimplementing new production centers may prove costly and time-consuming.\u201d<\/p>\n This raises the question of whether the cannabis industry in Africa will be more of a responsible player than other industries historically have been. It\u2019s not likely. So far, there have been a few bad signs.<\/p>\n NBC News<\/a>\u00a0reported earlier this month on a sobering case from Cameroon, where\u00a0British firm\u00a0Trade Park<\/a>\u00a0said it had lined up investment from globe-spanning tobacco and drug companies to carve a 154-square-mile cannabis plantation out of the rainforest and bring thousands of jobs to impoverished locals.\u00a0But things didn\u2019t work out that way.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead, four years after Trade Park Corporation signed its first papers with local officials, there is nothing to show for the project but angry investors, some stakes in the ground and a few dirt roads already being reclaimed by jungle,\u201d NBC wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Many of the major backers boasted by Trade Park \u2014 including German pharmaceutical giant\u00a0Bayer<\/a>\u00a0(controversial<\/a>\u00a0producer of glyphosate herbicide) and U.S. tobacco major\u00a0Altria<\/a>\u00a0(reviled<\/a>\u00a0makers of Marlboro cigarettes) \u2014 told NBC they\u2019d never heard of the project. The residents of the locality where the project was planned, Meyomessala, are clearly bitter.<\/p>\n \u201cTrade Park could not honor its commitments,\u201d Christian Mebiame Mfou\u2019ou, mayor of Meyomessala, wrote to reporters when asked about the project.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Trade Park\u2019s plans only came to light this month when a\u00a0huge cache of corporate records was leaked<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0Formations House<\/a>, a UK firm that specializes in contriving offshore \u201cshell companies\u201d for shady clients. This drew a flurry of investigations into the affair.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project found that locals had been hired to cut roads into the bush for the project in anticipation of a visit to review the site by British investors and a high-level delegation from the Cameroon government. But the company appears to have cut its losses and pulled out shortly afterward \u2014 leaving the hired road crews unpaid for their labor.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe were all involved in digging roads that made it easy for the delegation to move within the forest,\u201d Mvondo, a member of the local Bulu indigenous group,\u00a0told investigators<\/a>. \u201cNo one paid us and until today they still owe us.\u201d<\/p>\n Neither the cannabis plantation nor the promised jobs have materialized, and the local people have returned to subsistence farming.\u00a0<\/p>\n These revelations from Cameroon come almost exactly a year after all too similar ones from the Democratic Republic of Congo. There was a brief media splash when a Canadian company called\u00a0InstaDose Pharma<\/a>\u00a0was reported to be poised to drive down the price of CBD globally by dumping a vast quantity on the market, produced from hemp grown by cheap labor in the DRC.<\/p>\n \u201cFlying under the radar for the past few months, InstaDose Pharma is ready to hit the market with 2 million liters of CBD oil in 2019,\u201d wrote Canada\u2019s\u00a0Financial Post<\/a>\u00a0on Dec. 27, 2018. \u201cInstaDose Pharma has over 200,000 farmers harvesting cannabis out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo on over 100,000 hectares of land.\u201d<\/p>\n The report predicted an imminent drop in CBD prices of over 96%.<\/p>\n Such reports disappeared as quickly as they had come, and no Congolese CBD flooded the global market.\u00a0Equity Guru<\/a>\u00a0website scoffed in a withering headline: \u201cInstadose: When the scam is so brazen that it becomes unintentional comedy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The most credible report that Equity Guru could find \u2014 dated Oct. 24, 2018, attributed to Congolese media, apparently posted to (but since\u00a0removed from<\/a>) the InstaDose website and now online at\u00a0Financial News Media<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 merely said that the DRC\u2019s deputy agriculture minister, No\u00ebl Botakile, had \u201cwelcomed the initiative.\u201d Not that cannabis was already in production at the sites, named as in Lualaba and Kasai Central provinces. Much less that finished CBD products were ready to go to market.<\/p>\n The DRC, of course, has been wracked for generations now by horrific internal conflicts, making it the site of\u00a0one of the world\u2019s worst humanitarian crises<\/a>. Resource extraction under the control of lawless actors has fueled the conflicts \u2014 such as the notorious \u201cblood coltan<\/a>\u201d in your cellphone. The families of children abused in near-slave labor conditions in Congolese cobalt mines recently\u00a0launched suit<\/a>\u00a0against tech companies including Apple, Google, Tesla and Microsoft in the U.S. courts. Israeli firms have been\u00a0particularly criticized<\/a>\u00a0for dealing in \u201cblood diamonds\u201d from other African conflict zones. And Cameroon is also at this moment\u00a0descending into internal conflict<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those concerned with\u00a0responsible business practices in the cannabis industry<\/a>\u00a0would do well to keep a close eye on Africa. The last thing we want is to be seeing headlines about \u201cblood CBD\u201d a year or two down the line.<\/p>\n TELL US,\u00a0<\/strong>which country do you think will be next to legalize cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Cannabis in Africa: Will 2020 Be the Breakthrough Year?<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
People have been growing cannabis in Africa for centuries, and now legal cannabis production has taken hold in some countries on the continent \u2014 with several more anticipating an embrace of the new industry on the horizon. Overseas investment is coming in, and recent media reports predict an African cannabisContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3476,50,136,94,170,133,66],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40308"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40309,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40308\/revisions\/40309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Media Predict Continental Cannabis Boom in 2020<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The Specter of Cut-and-Run Capitalism\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Cannabis in Africa: Will 2020 Be the Breakthrough Year?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"