New Report Flags West Africa as Key Cocain Route for Europe’s
At least 30 percent of Europe’s cocaine is believed to be routed through West Africa, where synthetic drug markets are diversifying and expanding at an alarming pace, driving urgent security, public health and human rights challenges, according to two new studies published by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).
The reports, produced by the GI-TOC West Africa Observatory (WEA-Obs), map trafficking routes, actor typologies, supply chains and response shortcomings across the region.
Based on over 190 interviews conducted in 2025, the research establishes an evidence-based baseline of the threat posed by cocaine and synthetic drug markets in West Africa.
West Africa’s cocaine market has surged since 2019, with the region emerging as a growing warehousing, redistribution and containerization point in international cocaine trafficking routes.
The unprecedented scale and profitability of the cocaine market makes it a powerful corrupting force, undermining governance across the region
Crucially, researchers found that corruption rather than violence serves as the key enabler of cocaine trafficking in West Africa.
Since 2019, existing evidence indicates that European criminal networks have expanded operations in the region, embedding themselves deeper into local trafficking infrastructure.
State-embedded actors, foreign criminal networks and regional intermediaries form a triangle of players coordinating bulk cocaine flows through West Africa.
Armed groups, including violent extremist organizations, and some of the world’s most sophisticated organized crime groups are benefiting from the region’s cocaine trade.
“Cocaine does not transit the region with no trace: its effects on governance, public health and security are significant and escalating,” researchers warned.
Between 2023 and 2025, the synthetic drug trade became the fastest-growing criminal market across West Africa, according to the Organized Crime Index.
The region’s synthetic drug markets are expanding, diversifying and driving escalating harms, with powerful synthetic opioids having particularly devastating impacts.
Methamphetamine markets are now entrenched in Nigeria, where consumption has surged, and are spreading to other states including Sierra Leone.
Lucia Bird, Director of the GI-TOC West Africa Observatory and co-author of the report, told RFI that researchers discovered “a very significant spread of methamphetamine in Nigeria, in particular”.
“Previously, this phenomenon was concentrated in the south-east of the country. But our research shows the presence today of methamphetamine in many cities and in several regions of northern Nigeria,” Bird said.
“Methamphetamine was regularly cited as the most consumed drug, particularly by the ‘Yahoo Boys,’ these young people specialized in cybercrime and online extortion” .
Kush, an often deadly mix of synthetic cannabinoids and nitazenes potent synthetic opioids many times stronger than fentanyl continues to drive fatalities in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, and is spreading rapidly into Senegal.
The crisis has grown so severe that since 2024, two countries have declared states of emergency in an unprecedented response previously reserved for deadly epidemics and pandemics .
Ecstasy markets have mushroomed in Senegal, Gambia and Sierra Leone, while captagon a psychostimulant of the amphetamine family produced illegally mainly in Syria is beginning to infiltrate the region.
Digital technology and globalized supply chains are tying West Africa’s synthetic drug markets to global trends, underpinning the emergence of new psychoactive substances and driving market expansion.
Internet penetration across the region has facilitated the online purchase of precursor chemicals and finished products, often from suppliers in Asia and Europe, smuggled into the region through difficult-to-monitor channels such as postal and courier services .
These “precursors” can be bought directly online, imported sometimes in small quantities via regular mail services, and then assembled locally .
This ease of production has enabled numerous criminal actors to enter an increasingly diffuse and complex drug market. The diversity of synthetics available in the region makes their detection, identification and seizure particularly difficult for law enforcement .
Low barriers to entry, partly due to expanding online wholesale drug markets, mean criminal actors in the synthetics market are multiplying. The synthetic drug trade represents a “bridge” market that allows new entrants to accumulate capital rapidly.
The harms driven by synthetic drug markets, including overdoses, chronic and severe mental health conditions, and community fragmentation, are escalating
The burden of consumption and its consequences falls disproportionately on young people; in the worst-affected countries, this poses a serious threat to future stability and economic development .
In Sierra Leone, where the government declared a national emergency over synthetic drug use, chemical analysis commissioned by the government and conducted by GI-TOC in collaboration with the Clingendael Institute in the Netherlands revealed that nearly 50 percent of kush samples contained nitazenes highly potent synthetic opioids that can be many times stronger than fentanyl. Other samples contained synthetic cannabinoids, with some containing both.
While precise mortality figures are not yet available, experts warn that kush has likely killed thousands in West Africa .
Critical data gaps present a key obstacle to evidence-based and effective public health and criminal justice responses.
The report highlights significant weaknesses in forensic drug-testing capacity across the region, leaving authorities uncertain about the composition and potency of many seized substances .
Treatment and rehabilitation services remain underfunded and overstretched . In Nigeria, six states have no drug treatment centre, while another nine have only one, according to a 2022 count.
The entire country of more than 200 million people has only 2,500 beds for drug treatment meaning some 10,000 people can be treated in a given year, out of an estimated three million Nigerians who need help .
“Across markets the evidence points to significant expansion of the criminal markets, driving escalating harms, while the response falls further behind,” said Kingsley Madueke, Nigeria Research Coordinator at the GI-TOC.
“The findings underscore the need for interventions that integrate public health, governance and criminal-justice priorities”.
The reports were tabled for consultation at a high-level dialogue titled “Mapping the future of drug markets in West Africa Synthetics, cocaine, criminal money, and strategic responses,” jointly convened by the Government of Ghana, the Government of the Netherlands, and the GI-TOC, in Accra, Ghana in November 2025.
At the closing ceremony of that conference, Ghana’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa warned that the crisis now posed one of the gravest threats to the region’s stability, public health and future development .
“We are witnessing the disturbing growth of domestic drug consumption and the rapid emergence of synthetic drug markets, which are exerting devastating effects on our youth and communities,” Ablakwa said .
The “Accra Call to Action” adopted at the conference commits governments to evidence-based policies, improved data collection and deeper international cooperation under ECOWAS, the African Union and the UN systems .
The published studies integrate feedback received across these consultations. Findings are being presented at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs at UNODC in Vienna from March 9-13, 2026, followed by a GI-TOC webinar series.
At the Vienna meetings, the GI-TOC is drawing attention to developments in illicit drug markets and promoting innovative multilateral efforts to respond, with a focus on recent cooperation with the governments of Ghana and the Netherlands to build momentum for action through the ‘Accra Call to Action’ .
The report concludes that coordinated regional action, drawing on multi-stakeholder coalitions, is urgently needed. Without such a unified and multifaceted strategy, West Africa risks being overwhelmed by the profound and lasting damage of synthetic drugs.