Highway 10. West Africa's Price for Europe's Cocaine Addiction

Now the parallel is in use again as one of the preferred routes for South-American drug cartels for cocaine, with West-Africa as a stockpiling stopover along the way to the growing European market.

In the fourteen years since the route has been fully functional, West-Africa has suffered the spillover effects of the drug trade. After the seizure of first eight tonnes of cocaine and then 1.2 tonnes of cocaine in South-America, with the port city of Abidjan as destination, this story focuses on the little known effects of the drug trade in Ivory Coast, a country that has suffered a great deal of civil unrest in the last decades.

Besides the obvious detrimental effects on health and the social fabric in the country, does the drug trade also have the potential of bringing about political violence and military adventurism as it has done in other West-African nations before? 

© Daan Bauwens