Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about national drug policies in various countries around the world. For decades, Nigeria’s government has been at the forefront of drug enforcement in West Africa, leading the charge against trafficking in the region and treating it largely as a criminal issue at home. But the sale and use of illicit drugs domestically does not appear to be falling. On March 21, more than 13,000 pounds of cannabis were seized in the home and warehouse of a single individual in Benin City, according to local reports. The previous day, the governor [...]
After more than five years of negotiations, Joseph Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, signed into law a new mining code earlier this month. The code faced strong opposition from mining companies, which now face higher royalties and taxes. The government has said it may be willing to negotiate terms on a case-by-case basis. Congo has extensive mineral wealth and is the top source of cobalt globally and the top source of copper in Africa. In an email interview, Thomas Lassourd, a senior economic analyst at the Natural Resource Governance Institute, or NRGI, discusses why the government decided [...]
Nigeria’s population has quadrupled in the past 60 years, creating a host of pressures on the country’s rural population and pushing farmers and herders into an escalating state of conflict. In 2016 and 2017, four states in Nigeria enacted bans on the open grazing of cattle, aimed at restricting herders and the pastoral communities they support. But the bans haven’t helped reduce violence; over 100 people have already been killed in clashes between farmers and herders this year. In an email interview, Adam Higazi, a research fellow at the University of Amsterdam and an affiliated lecturer at the University of [...]
