One of Africa's biggest-ever drug seizures took place on September 1st at a modest bungalow outside the town of Canchungo in Guinea-Bissau. Hidden behind a fake wall, Bissau-Guinean judicial police found 1,660kg of cocaine—enough to cut 100m lines. They arrested a dozen people, including three Colombians and a Mexican, and nabbed 18 cars and a speedboat. The drugs were destined for Mali and ultimately, Europe.
Before that, they had reported no drugs hauls to the un Office on Drugs and Crime for over a decade. For most observers the surprise was not that a big shipment of drugs was passing through the country, but that the police stopped it. In Guinea-Bissau, a small, poor west African state of just 1.9m people, where over 90% of formal exports are cashew nuts, cocaine-smuggling has been a huge business since at least 2005.
Having fallen during the global financial crisis, production of hard drugs is now as high as it has ever been. In Colombia, since a peace deal with the farc was signed in 2016, the coca crop has increased dramatically. When the farc disbanded, new traffickers rushed to take control of their territory.
