Source Countries and
Drug Transit Zones: West Africa
The trafficking of narcotics through the West Africa region is increasing and threatens to undermine the stability and security in the region. In recent years, West Africa has become a hub for cocaine trafficking as airplanes and ships loaded with narcotics are coming from Latin America into airfields and ports that often lack law enforcement resources and are vulnerable to corruption. These shipments are divided into smaller loads and sent to Europe via a variety of means to include commercial flights, maritime traffic, and even traditional overland caravan routes. As a result, an estimated $2 billion a year in cocaine at wholesale level prices flows into the European Union and cocaine consumption across Europe is on the rise, even doubling in some nations.
However, this is not so much a drug problem as one of the consequences of weak governments, broken economies, and general incapacity to enforce laws against well-financed criminals. The situation in West Africa is a threat to stability and security in the region as the drugs and drug money flowing through the area disrupt often fragile state institutions, corrupt under-resourced criminal justice and law enforcement agencies, and threaten to produce narco-states. These weaknesses have also made Africa vulnerable to heroin and marijuana trafficking and to the transshipment of methamphetamine precursor chemicals but cocaine is unquestionably the biggest challenge facing the region.
In order to prevent the formation of a region of lawlessness, instability, and corruption, the United States, the European Union, the Economic Community of Western African States, and the United Nations Security Council all have included in their agendas the issue of establishing a solid foundation for state institutions and criminal justice agencies in order to bolster the rule of law in the West African region.
