Cocaine Trafficking between Latin America and West Africa

Abstract

For more than 10 years, one third of the cocaine that enters Europe does so through West Africa. Nevertheless, little is known about the relationship between Latin America, as the region that produces cocaine, and West Africa, as a zone of trafficking, stockpiling and consumption. This article, which is of an exploratory kind, seeks to understand why West Africa presents itself as attractive to Latin-American traffickers and how the link between them and the Africans works. The hypothesis stated in this work is that African States have been co-opted by criminal organizations. They generate  greater incentives for Latin American criminal organizations, which consider this route less risky and more profitable than others, even though they have to negotiate part of the logistics with their African peers. As a result, three hubs through which cocaine comes from Latin America have been detected: one on the Atlantic Coast, one in the Sahel and another one in the Gulf of Benin.