Heroin, cocaine and marijuana markets in Uganda are changing

Uganda has not been spared from the rise of the southern route of heroin trafficking which has developed in East and Southern Africa in recent years. As the Global Initiative has reported elsewhere, this has grown from a coastal trade into an established regional drug economy.¹ Law-enforcement agencies in Uganda have been tracking a steady increase in the volume of heroin flowing through the country for some years. The rise in domestic consumption and its impacts on local communities have been severe.

As we reported in a previous issue of the Risk Bulletin, the implementation of Uganda’s Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act, which came into force in 2016, has helped create a more permissive environment for drug traffickers while at the same time applying punitive approaches to people who use drugs, due to the way penalties under the act have been applied by the courts.

Fieldwork conducted in December 2019 investigated emerging trends in drug trafficking in Uganda. While our focus is on the changing dynamics of heroin markets, there have also been significant recent shifts in other drug markets, including cocaine and marijuana.

Heroin

Between 2008 and 2014, the volume of heroin moving through Uganda rose sharply,² aligning with the broader trend across East Africa. Since then, the heroin trade has continued growing; Uganda’s Anti-Narcotics Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) reported seizing 120 kilograms of heroin in 2019.³

Heroin-trafficking networks in Uganda are believed to be predominantly Nigerian and to a lesser extent European and Pakistani.⁴ Nigerian and Pakistani networks reportedly launder profits through licit automobile businesses, the former specializing in spare parts, the latter in vehicles.⁵

However, the intelligence picture is incomplete. The limited resources available to Uganda’s Anti-Narcotics CID and the low investigative capacity in law-enforcement agencies mean that the bulk of intelligence is sourced from people who use drugs who are arrested for possession and then share information regarding their dealers.

Ugandan law-enforcement officials believe the vast majority of heroin enters the country through its land borders rather than its international airport.⁶

The implementation of a single customs union across the East Africa Economic Area means that once a consignment has been cleared at the first port of entry, subsequent checks are more limited.⁷ Landlocked member states such as Uganda are therefore reliant on coastal member countries, namely Kenya and Tanzania, to implement effective screening at their seaports.

Authorities at seaports such as Mombasa have faced significant challenges in the identification of narcotics from endemic corruption, insufficient training of customs officers, and limited capabilities to examine the vast volume of containers traffic flowing through the port.⁸ This facilitates significant secondary overland flows of heroin into Uganda, predominantly through its border with Kenya.

At Uganda’s national borders, checks are further diluted by the limited capacity of border staff to identify narcotics; identifying drug precursors is an even greater problem. Where interceptions are made, the low salaries of border force and law-enforcement officials, about 600 000 Ugandan shillings (US$154) per month, make them highly susceptible to bribes. Numerous unstaffed border crossings present further vulnerabilities across Uganda’s borders.⁹

Entebbe airport remains a conduit for outward flows of heroin. Ugandan law-enforcement officials suggested that Entebbe’s attractiveness to drug-trafficking networks is primarily because of the following factors:

• Uganda does not have a reputation as a source country for drugs, so checks on people travelling from the country are more limited.
• KLM, an airline which flies out of Entebbe air­-port, is perceived to be secure by European law-enforcement agencies and thus subjected to lesser checks.

In contrast, Ethiopian Airlines is widely recognized to carry significant volumes of drugs, and passengers travelling on their flights are often subjected to more stringent checks.

New trends in heroin outflow

In 2019, law-enforcement officials tracked an increase in the use of elderly European (predominantly Italian) drug mules to move narcotics out of Uganda. They suggested that traffickers are exploiting known characteristics of Ugandan society, namely respect for the elderly and deference to Europeans, to lower the risk of checks. This is a significant recent shift: while historically Ugandans represented over a third of mules detained moving narcotics out of Entebbe, in 2019 they were vastly outnumbered by foreign nationals.¹⁰

A number of people carrying heroin seized at Entebbe airport in 2019 were travelling to India rather than to typical European destinations. This suggests an extremely circuitous route between Afghanistan, the country of supply, and India, the destination. A hypothesis put forward by Ugandan law-enforcement officials is that heightening tensions between India and Pakistan in 2019, particularly in relation to Kashmir, have made the border between the two countries more difficult to cross, and that this has displaced heroin flows, which instead flow from Afghanistan through Iran, into East Africa and back to India.¹¹

While the sheer length of the India–Pakistan border calls into question such wholesale displacement, Indian media reports of arrests and seizures suggest that other East and Southern African countries are playing similar transit roles. In a case reported in the Indian press in mid-February 2020, two women were arrested on arrival in Delhi after smuggling heroin from Pakistan via Mozambique.¹²

Another route has been detected overland from Uganda to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, which is a four-hour drive from Uganda’s northern border.¹³ Traffickers reportedly take advantage of the lack of checks at Juba airport to move the drugs to Europe. The lack of direct flights means transit is required, with traffickers reportedly preferring to transit through Addis Ababa, or to a lesser extent back through Uganda via Entebbe airport, taking advantage of the lighter checks on transit passengers.

Figure 8 Heroin trafficking routes in and out of Uganda

SOURCE: Interviews conducted with Anti-Narcotics CID officials, legal practitioners and civil society members, December 2019.

Cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines

Uganda is also, to a lesser extent than for heroin, a transit zone for cocaine from South America towards Europe. In 2019, local law-enforcement officials identified an overland route moving cocaine from Juba towards Kampala (flowing in the opposite direction to the heroin route tracked above). Anti-Narcotics CID officials posit that cocaine is flown from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Juba (transiting primarily through Addis), where it then transits overland to Entebbe airport for onwards movement.¹⁴ The cocaine and heroin networks are believed to be separate.¹⁵

Uganda produces both illegal and legal marijuana. The country’s Anti-Narcotics CID has reported that known illegal cultivation markedly increased in the period following the unit’s inception in 2007. While part of that increase was likely due to better reporting following the establishment of the unit, CID also attributed it to the displacement of marijuana growers from Tanzania and Kenya following harsher enforcement against marijuana production in those countries.¹⁶

Cultivation of marijuana for export and medical purposes with a license issued by the National Drug Authority is permitted under the Narcotic and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act 2016. Superficially, this seems at odds with the prohibitionist position espoused by the Act, but the economic incentive of tax revenue from licensed marijuana companies drove the change. Licensed companies are obligated to ensure that all product is exported to jurisdictions where marijuana is legal for medical use. In 2019 Industrial Hemp Uganda Limited, in partnership with Together Pharma Ltd, an Israeli-owned company, entered into annual supply contracts with pharmacies in Canada and Germany.¹⁷

A 2019 Ministry of Health cabinet paper reported receipt of applications by 14 companies seeking licenses to cultivate marijuana; however, as many as 100 companies are reportedly positioning themselves to enter the market. The cabinet has been debating the financial benefits and health risks of permitting widespread licit cultivation, and government guidelines, together with the licensing of additional companies, are expected imminently.¹⁸ Uganda therefore appears at the forefront of African countries taking advantage of the financial opportunities offered by the licit marijuana market.

While there have been seizures of methamphetamines in Uganda, domestic law-enforcement officials report that no domestic methamphetamine laboratories have been found.¹⁹ Instead, it is believed to be synthesized outside the country, including in Tanzania (a belief premised in part on a 2017 seizure of 40 kilograms of methamphetamines close to the Ugandan border with Tanzania). However, a 2017 raid in northern Uganda found large volumes of methamphetamine-precursor chemicals in the possession of a Nigerian national, suggesting an attempt to set up a methamphetamine-production lab.

Domestic consumption

As has been seen across East and Southern Africa, increased heroin trafficking through Uganda has also fostered an increase in domestic consumption. Heroin prices have steadily decreased, aligned with a global downturn predominantly driven by an excess of supply from Afghanistan, which has made the drug affordable by a wider demographic.

One kilogram of heroin reportedly costs US$7 000–US$8 000, while one ‘hit’, measured as one scoop by the dealer’s long pinkie fingernail, can cost as little as US$1.5 (about 5 000 Ugandan shillings), depending on purity and the area in which the drugs are sold. Domestic law-enforcement officials have tracked increasing purity in seized heroin, which carries the common street names ‘brown’, ‘sugar’ and ‘mugo’.²⁰

Drug use is particularly prevalent among men aged 18–25 and sex workers. High youth unemployment rates contribute to growing consumption. Domestic drug consumption is concentrated in urban areas, with Kampala the epicentre. However, more limited enforcement in rural areas also means intelligence regarding consumption there is scarce. Use is reportedly prevalent among motorbike taxi drivers, termed boda bodas (almost exclusively male), and is blamed for a recent increase in road accidents. A state-funded project has been approved to carry out spot drug tests on boda boda drivers in 2020.

A significant and growing number of people inject heroin. Civil-society groups suggest that the government estimate of people who inject drugs – 58 000 in 2019 – is conservative, noting that the government had previously denied the existence of injecting drug users in the country.²¹

In a slum in Kampala, Uganda, two men prepare to inject heroin. Usually users prefer smoking the drug due to the risk of overdose and disease associated with injecting.

© Michele Sibiloni

Although domestic cocaine consumption exists, it remains more expensive and therefore less widespread. Domestic consumption of methamphetamine is low and concentrated in areas with large construction or mining projects. Chinese populations, particularly prevalent in such areas, reportedly consume a larger proportion of methamphetamine.

In conclusion, the low price of heroin in Uganda points towards the existence of a regular primary supply of pure wholesale heroin transiting the country, some of which spills over into the domestic supply chain, through in-kind payments to dealers and others working in the business. Alternatively, or additionally, it could indicate a strong secondary supply chain linking to neighbouring wholesale markets. Ongoing research by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime also suggests that Uganda could play a role in heroin routes into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and southwards down the continent. We continue to monitor the shifting dynamics in the region.

Notes