A new report has exposed how criminals in East Africa are exploiting porous routes in Kenya and Tanzania to traffic drugs from Pakistan and Iran, which are then repackaged and shipped to Europe and the United States.
Drug traffickers in the two countries, along with those based in South Africa, are reaping huge profits from the dangerous trade that has led to the imprisonment of several Kenyans.
A notable example is individuals who worked closely with the Akasha brothers, who are now serving jail terms in the US.
Those jailed in connection with the Akasha Brothers saga include Baktash Akasha Abdalla, Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, Muhammad Asif Hafeez (alias Sultan) and Gulam Hussein. They were convicted for trafficking heroin to the US.
A report by the Eastern and Southern Africa Commission on Drugs (ESACD) lists these two countries as major transit points in the global flow of illicit drugs.
“Significant quantities of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine are shipped to and through the region's air, land and sea ports each year. These flows arrive and transit through supply hubs alongside licit trade and an overwhelming volume of the drug flows remain undetected,” the report reads in part.
“It is difficult to fully comprehend the scale of the maritime trade environment, particularly as it relates to the region's coastlines: the area is vast, the traffic patterns varied and the formal and informal trade flows involve many vessel types and sizes,” it adds.
According to the report, intelligence and research confirm that maritime heroin flows enter the region via coastal points in Tanzania and central Mozambique. Kenya and South Africa are also identified as key entry points.
It further states that Mozambique has become the primary regional entry point for methamphetamine from Afghanistan while Madagascar is increasingly emerging as a significant trans-shipment hub for heroin and cocaine as well as for intra-regional distribution of these drugs and cannabis.
Information gathered from a series of regional consultation meetings involving civil society, government stakeholders, community-based project staff, researchers and drug user networks helped form the basis of the commission's findings.
The commission developed a regional overview along with four key findings, 12 recommendations, and 40 proposed actions to enhance the regional response to the illicit drug trade in Eastern and Southern Africa.
“While there is evidence of some supply from countries in neighboring regions, Kenya, Eswatini, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda have been identified as important source countries for cannabis within the region,” the report notes, adding that Lesotho and Madagascar are also significant suppliers in the illicit cannabis trade.
Heroin in the region primarily originates from Afghanistan produced from the gum of the opium poppy plant. However, cultivation has decreased in the last three years following a ban by the Taliban government.
On cocaine, the report notes that increasing volumes from South America are reaching coastal states such as Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa.
“Shipments arrive either aboard container ships and other transoceanic vessels or in smaller volumes by air via West Africa. Most of the cocaine that reaches the region is intended for onward trans-shipment to markets in Europe and Asia, but an increasing amount remains in the region to supply growing domestic consumer markets,” the report says.
Regional flows of cocaine move overland via major cargo transport routes and border points as well as through airports in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
International departure points for air shipments of cocaine to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia include multi-segment passenger and cargo flights originating in Uganda, Malawi, South Africa, Zambia and further north, Ethiopia.
The methamphetamine supply in the region began in South Africa in the early 1990s according to the report.
It was initially linked to the illicit trade of poached marine resources, particularly abalone traded in exchange for precursor chemicals.
“South African gangs traded abalone to Chinese criminal syndicates in return for chemicals, which they used to produce methamphetamine. As industrial production labs emerged in and around Nigeria in 2016, South African distributors shifted from local wholesale to regional supply,” the report states.
The report says that cannabis remains the most widely used illicit substance both in the region and across the African continent.
