Analabe
More actions
| Analabe | |
|---|---|
| Analabe Ambanja | |
| ActiveRecorded as grown here since 2000 | |
| Geography | |
| Country | Madagascar |
| Province/State | Diana Region |
| District | Ambanja District |
| Coordinates | -13.82, 48.55 |
| Landscape | |
| Area | 6,000 km² |
| Terrain | Humid highlands south of Ambanja, rising to the forested Tsaratanana massif; approximately Ambanja District |
| Climate | |
| Climate Type | Humid; highly variable and often rainy |
| Growing history | |
| Dated accessions | 2025 |
| Documentation | |
| Appellations | 0 |
| Accessions | 1 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Analabe is a landrace cannabis growing area in northern Madagascar, in the mountains of Ambanja District, Diana Region. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) counts the mountainous region of Analabe, in the district where the rural commune of Antsahabe lies, among the main cannabis-growing regions of the country. The mayor of Antsahabe put the commune's own output at no less than 200 tonnes a year.[1] Gendarmes destroyed cannabis fields in the communes of Antsahabe and Marotolana in 2020, and in the Tsaratanana Reserve, in Ambohitrandriana, Antsahabe-Centre and Marotolana communes, in 2023 and 2024.[2][3][4]
Geography
The Tsaratanana massif, south of Ambanja, is the highest range in Madagascar. Its summit, Maromokotro, reaches 2,876 m, and the Ramena, Sambirano and Mahavavy rivers rise on it. Dense humid evergreen forest covers the slopes up to about 2,000 m, with a belt of bamboo forest above.[5] The Tsaratanana Strict Nature Reserve was created in 1927. Many parts of its interior are three or four days' walk from the nearest road, and some of the lower ground on its edge towards Ambanja has been bare of forest for decades.[6]
Antsahabe's cash crops include cocoa, coffee and vanilla.[1] The Real Seed Company places its northern Malagasy line in the humid highlands of the north, at about 14° S, in country with a highly variable and often rainy climate.[7] Its listing of April 2026 said that the seed was collected in the highlands of Ambanja District.[8]
Fields in the forest
The director of the Tsaratanana Reserve for Madagascar National Parks (MNP) told Mongabay in 2020 that illicit cannabis growing was the main cause of land clearing in the reserve. Park officials dated the problem to 1960. They said that land near the reserve could grow pepper, cocoa and vanilla, but that cannabis could be grown several times a year with little tending, which suited so remote an area, and that it fetched very high prices. Most of the clearing was in the north of the reserve. According to MNP, some growers may reach it from the north-west, while many come from the Sofia region to the south or from the far south of the island.[6] In December 2020 MNP again said that cannabis growing was the main cause of deforestation in Tsaratanana, where satellite data showed forest cleared along the river valleys and, for the first time, above 1,600 m.[9] The Key Biodiversity Areas factsheet for the massif lists cannabis growing in the Ramena valley among the threats to it.[5]
Local people told the GI-TOC that young people of the area worked in the cannabis fields or carried the crop to and from collection points. Farmers could sell a kilogram of green cannabis for about 20,000 ariary, against about 25,000 for cocoa, depending on the season.[1]
Eradication
In October 2019 the gendarmerie found a 60-hectare cannabis field in Ambanja and burned several tonnes of the crop.[2] An operation by the Antsiranana gendarmerie, whose area takes in Analabe, destroyed more than 80,000 cannabis plants in May and June 2020, seized more than 16 tonnes of cannabis and 21 litres of cannabis oil and led to 80 arrests. In July 2020 the gendarmerie burned more than 100 hectares of cannabis in Analabe and arrested more than a dozen farmers.[1] In a three-day operation in October 2020 gendarmes found 650 kg of freshly harvested leaf and 31 kg of seed in a hut in the middle of a 25-hectare field at Antetezampaka, in Marotolana. At Antsahafaly Tanambao, in Antsahabe, they gathered 1,500 kg of leaf and 46 kg of seed over 35 hectares. The uprooted cannabis and the seed were burned on the spot.[2]
MNP has organised patrols inside the reserve with soldiers and gendarmes, which it calls mixed brigades. In two missions in 2017 a brigade found 30 cannabis storehouses, burned what they held and arrested 12 people. Cases from the operation planned for 2020 were to go to the prosecutor at Ambanja.[6] In five missions in 2020 the brigades destroyed 35 hectares of fields and arrested 13 people.[9] Between 11 and 20 June 2023 a gendarmerie patrol cleared a 30-hectare tract of cannabis in the reserve, in the communes of Ambohitrandriana and Marotolana, taking 4,023 kg of plants and 30 kg of seed. It arrested a local farmer suspected of clearing the land for the crop.[3] From 4 to 15 July 2024 twenty gendarmes and four MNP agents worked in the protected area of Mount Tsaratanana, chiefly in the communes of Ambohitrandriana, Antsahabe-Centre and Marotolana. They pulled up 600,000 plants on ten hectares and burned 950 kg of dried cannabis. The traffickers fled when the patrols arrived.[4]
Trade and armed groups
Cannabis was carried from the fields on foot, on journeys of two days or more, to trucks bound for the cities or to warehouses in towns such as Ambilobe. The mayor of Antsahabe told the GI-TOC that loads went from Analabe to Ambanja town by road, on foot or by river, and by sea to the Comoros, Mayotte and other islands of the Indian Ocean.[1] Some of the crop was shipped to the Comoros by way of Nosy Be.[10]
The mayor said that traffickers came to Analabe from Mahajanga, Antananarivo and other provinces, and residents of Antsahabe and nearby villages said that hundreds of them worked there in secret. The head of the gendarmerie's counter-narcotics unit said that the traffickers carried Kalashnikov rifles and that even gendarmes could not go into the forests. A coordination officer at Ambanja called the groups "truly cartels who don't hesitate to kill".[1]
Accessions
| Accession ID | Name | Collected |
|---|---|---|
| RSC-MDG-DIA-0120250001 | Dzamal (North) General Population 2025 |
The Real Seed Company sells a northern Malagasy line under the name Dzamal, from seed collected in 2025.[7]
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See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (April–May 2021). Madagascar's large-scale cannabis market remains a criminal enterprise. East and Southern Africa Risk Bulletin (Report).
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Léonard, Hajatiana (14 October 2020). "Ambanja – Près de trois tonnes de cannabis saisis" [Ambanja: nearly three tonnes of cannabis seized]. L'Express de Madagascar (in français). Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Léonard, Hajatiana (22 June 2023). "Ambanja – Les gendarmes saisissent 4 tonnes de cannabis" [Ambanja: gendarmes seize 4 tonnes of cannabis]. L'Express de Madagascar (in français). Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Mparany, Gustave (17 July 2024). "Stupéfiant – Une plantation de cannabis sur dix hectares rasée" [Narcotics: a ten-hectare cannabis plantation razed]. L'Express de Madagascar (in français). Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Tsaratanana Strict Nature Reserve and extension". Key Biodiversity Areas. KBA Partnership. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Carver, Edward (29 May 2020). "Marijuana cultivation whittling away Madagascar's largest connected forest". Mongabay. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Dzamal – Madagascar (North)". The Real Seed Company. Retrieved 24 September 2026.
- ↑ "Dzamal – Madagascar (North)". The Real Seed Company. Archived from the original on 21 April 2026. Retrieved 16 September 2026.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Carver, Edward (21 December 2020). "A Madagascar forest long protected by its remoteness is now threatened by it". Mongabay. Retrieved 18 October 2026.
- ↑ Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (August–September 2020). Cannabis trafficking and endangered-tortoise trade drive corruption in Madagascar. East and Southern Africa Risk Bulletin (Report). Retrieved 18 October 2026.