West Africa's international drug trade

Since the publication in 2007 of a UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime) report on West Africa's role in the illegal cocaine trade from Latin America to Europe, considerable media attention has focused on Guinea-Bissau as a country infiltrated by drug interests. However, West Africa has a long history of involvement in the international drug trade, which has been dominated especially by Nigerian interests. 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. This article discusses the origins of the West African drug trade in the 1950s, the emergence of trafficking networks in the region, the structure of the Nigerian drug trade, the new bulk trade which has developed since the 1990s, and the West African drug trade and the long term. Notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract, edited]