A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (International Relations), 2017 / The trafficking of illegal narcotics on the African continent and into West Africa has resulted in human insecurity and state insecurity in the region. Furthermore, it has helped facilitate shadow economies such as the illegal trade in fire arms and human trafficking within the region deteriorating law and order, judicial enforcement, and political institutions in these countries. The West African region serves as a transit point in the distribution of narcotics to Europe from Latin America and has increasingly become a destination in drug trafficking. Various national, regional, and international strategies have been undertaken in combating this perceived scourge. The African Union, European Union, United Nations, and West African states themselves have all provided frameworks in combating drug trafficking in Africa. Despite these various strategies drug trafficking still thrives in West Africa. This thesis will assess one of these strategies that being the West African Coast Initiative (WACI). This thesis attempts to outline the various reasons for the growing importance of West Africa in the regional and international drug trade whilst assessing the impact WACI has had in dealing with the drug trade in West Africa. The reason the paper seeks to assess the effectiveness of the West African Coast Initiative is to highlight the obstacles and challenges the strategy has faced over the last eight years of its existence, to make recommendations in this regard, and to identify specific shortcomings in African institutional efforts in engaging with threats that exist outside the state / XL2018

Every phenomenon evolves with times. Illicit activities like Transnational Organized Crimes (TOC) are not an exception in this regard. Africa, especially West and Southern Africa, have been challenged by a number of TOCs. Ghana and South Africa are amongst the countries in West and Southern Africa that have been subjected to a range of crimes of this nature. Drug trafficking and money laundering are the most prominent illicit activities in Ghana and South Africa. Drug trafficking and money laundering has been prevalent in Ghana and South Africa to such an extent that it has contributed to the growth of illicit economy. Increased size of illicit economy, constrained state capacity and expansion of TOCs are amongst effects of drug trafficking and money laundering in Ghana and South Africa. This dissertation evaluates state capacity in relation to drug trafficking and money laundering in Ghana and South Africa in the period from 2001 to 2011. Regulatory, administrative, technical and extractive are elements of state capacity being looked at. The research used qualitative research method, this was achieved through textual analysis of secondary sources. Regulatory, administrative, and technical state capacity elements have been fairly operational in dealing with drug trafficking and money laundering in the period from 2001 to 2011 in the two countries being looked at. On the other hand extractive state capacity element has been struggling from 2001 to 2011 in reducing drug trafficking and money laundering in Ghana and South Africa. It is clear that globalization has played an important role in the occurrence of the two TOCs under discussion. To better understand TOCs further research needs to look at other regions within and outside Africa. / Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2013.

Looking primarily at the social and political trends in South Africa over the course of the last century and a half, this thesis explores how these trends have contributed to the establishment of the southern Africa cannabis complex. Through an examination of the influence which the colonial paradigm based on Social Darwinian thinking had on the understanding of the cannabis plant in southern Africa, it is argued that cannabis prohibition and apartheid laws rested on the same ideological foundation. This thesis goes on to argue that the dynamics of cannabis production and trade can be understood in terms of the interplay between the two themes of ‘prohibition’ and ‘resistance’. Prohibition is not only understood to refer to cannabis laws, but also to the proscription of inter-racial contact and segregation dictated by the apartheid regime. Resistance, then, refers to both resistance to apartheid and resistance to cannabis laws in this thesis. Including discussions on the hippie movement and development of the world trade, the anti-apartheid movement, the successful implementation of import substitution strategies in Europe and North America from the 1980’s, and South Africa’s incorporation into the global trade, this thesis illustrates how the apartheid system (and its collapse) influenced the region’s cannabis trade.