Africa and the War on Drugs

Nigerian drug lords in UK prisons, khat-chewing Somali pirates hijacking Western ships, crystal meth-smoking gangs controlling South Africa's streets and the Bissauan state captured by narco-traffickers. These are some of the vivid images surrounding drugs in Africa which have alarmed policymakers, academics and the general public in recent years. In this revealing and original book, the authors weave these aspects into a provocative argument about Africa's role in the global trade and control of drugs. In doing so, they show how foreign-inspired policies have failed to help African drug users who require medical support, while strengthening the role of corrupt and brutal law enforcement officers who are tasked with halting the export of heroin and cocaine to European and American consumer markets.A vital book on an overlooked front of the so-called 'war on drugs'.

Neil Carrier is a researcher based at the African Studies Centre, Oxford. He has published widely on the substance khat, which he first studied in Kenya and in the UK for his PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews (2004). In recent years, Carrier's focus has broadened to drugs in Africa more generally, and he has also carried out research in East Africa on a range of other issues, from film and photography to indigeneity. His current project focuses on the Somali diaspora and their impact upon Eastleigh, a Nairobi estate recently transformed into a booming commercial zone.

 

Gernot Klantschnig is a lecturer in International Studies at the University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China. He completed his DPhil in Politics at St Antony's College, Oxford in 2008. His doctoral research, which is now in the process of being published as a monograph by Brill, examined Nigeria's role in the international trade and control of illegal drugs. His recent publications and research have also focussed on the international politics of crime control, West African law enforcement, as well as China's growing economic and political engagement with Africa.

Introduction * 1. Africa's Drug Habit * 2. Drugs and Development: A New Threat or Opportunity? * 3. Drug barons, traffickers and mules: Africa as entrepot * 4. African states and drugs: complicity, neglect and repression * Conclusion: Alternatives to the Drug War