Although recreational marijuana remains prohibited in almost every country in Africa, it has not historically always been so. It might also surprise some to know that the continent played a role in its spread around the world.
First, however, the growing interest by countries in the continent to legalise the cultivation and export of medicinal cannabis is itself historical. In acknowledging its economic value, it probably also is a herald reminiscent of a more socially permissive era.
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So far, only around eleven countries in the continent have legalised the cultivation and export of medicinal marijuana, most of them in Southern Africa.
Rwanda is the latest, although consumption remains illegal, joining Uganda as the only other country to legalise medicinal weed in the East African Community (EAC).
The fact, however, is that the crop has always been cultivated and exported in Africa, although illegally, including in the EAC. The UN estimates that around 38,000 tonnes of cannabis worth billions of dollars are produced annually in Africa and sold in the black market.
Africans also rank among the highest consumers in the world after North America, with a significant number of them being in East Africa.
This points to a well-documented history of the crop in the continent, especially as told by Chris S. Duvall in his informative book, The African Roots of Marijuana.
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Researchers generally agree that the plant was introduced in Africa about 1,000 years ago from Asia where humans had been using cannabis and seeds and fibre for more than 12,000 years.
It quickly gained popularity on the continent, for example, as a worm infection protectant among the Aka forest dwellers in the Congo, as anaesthesia applied by midwives in Sierra Leone, and was dispensed as a balm to fortify warriors by the Sangoma healers of Southern Africa.
Eastern Africans might be surprised and perhaps interested to learn that after the plant arrived from Asia, it was their ancestors who discovered that smoking was a more efficient way to consume cannabis as a fast-acting and easily dosed drug.
After this new form of consuming cannabis spread across the continent, it would find its way across the Atlantic through the slave trade.
Duvall cites oral histories from Brazil, Jamaica, Liberia and Sierra Leone speaking of enslaved central Africans carrying cannabis with them.
In one case, a French-American traveler observes a man in Gabon in the 1840s "carefully preserving (seeds) intending to plant them in the country to which he should be sold."
At the advent of colonialism, cannabis was, therefore, legal before European moralism and mission to civilise Africa suppressed their cultures, including the consumption of marijuana despite its positives.
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It was, however, not until early in the 20th century when the medicinal use began to fall out of favour as Western medicine began to focus on isolated chemical entities and international prohibitions soon followed under the Geneva Convention on Opium and Other Drugs of 1925 that outlawed cannabis in many of the European colonies.
Given this history, the growing interest to commercialise and export medicinal cannabis is a kind of coming back home to Africa, even if recreational use is largely prohibited.
Currently, only South Africa and Botswana have legally allowed their citizens to possess cannabis but for their personal consumption and in private.
But it might be understood why there may be a reluctance in some countries to find it prudent yet to legalise the cultivation despite the huge economic potential.
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In Kenya, for example, it has been reported how the majority of Kenyan politicians are opposed to the legalisation of commercial marijuana even for export out of concern that over 162,000 children in Kenya below the age of 18 years use cannabis in school.
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But if not in Kenya or much of Africa just yet, perceptions are nonetheless changing especially in Europe and North America where legal cannabis is now almost par for the course for its citizens to buy and consume it as they wish.
This change has only been in the past few years and has spawned legal cannabis as big business. This arguably makes legal global cannabis a new sector of the economy, of which the inclusion of Africa in the now-legal international market coincides with the first shipment of medicinal cannabis by Lesotho in 2017.
Today, the global market of marijuana is estimated at USD 57.18 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to USD 444.34 billion by 2030. There is much to gain, therefore.
What remains, as some observers urge, is for governments to work their policy frameworks to be more inclusive of local investors in the burgeoning global business rather than leave it all to the multinationals.
