West Africa's International Drug Trade
Stephen Ellis (ELLIS{at}fsw.leidenuniv.nl) is Desmond Tutu professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences, Free University (VU), Amsterdam, and a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre, Leiden. He attended a conference on West African transnational crime organized by the UNODC in Dakar, Senegal, on 2–3 April 2004, and a conference of law-enforcement officers concerned with West African organized crime in Bangkok, Thailand, on 16–19 May 2005. He is grateful to two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draft of this article.
Since the publication in 2007 of a report on West Africa's role in the illegal cocaine trade from Latin America to Europe, considerable media attention has focused on Guinea-Bissau in particular as a country infiltrated by drug interests. However, West Africa has a long history of involvement in the international drug trade, that has been dominated by Nigerian interests especially. Consideration of this history may help stimulate a debate in historical sociology that will illuminate both the nature of involvement in the drug trade itself, and also larger questions about the long-term formation of the state.