Brong Ahafo
More actions
| Brong Ahafo | |
|---|---|
| ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later | |
| Location | |
| Coordinates | 7.70, -1.65 |
| Country | Ghana |
| Provinces/States | Bono Region,Bono East Region,Ahafo Region |
| Area | 40,300 km² |
| Growing history | |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
Brong Ahafo is a cannabis growing region in west-central Ghana, drawn on the former Brong Ahafo Region. In 2019 that region was divided into three: the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions.[1] Police reported cannabis growing in Brong Ahafo by the mid-1960s,[2] and a review by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in its Bulletin on Narcotics for 2006, named it among the four principal growing areas of the country.[3]: 71 A United Nations study of 1999 placed some of Ghana's main supply areas of high-quality cannabis in cocoa zones such as Brong Ahafo.[4]: 23 Reports since 2019 name places in the successor regions, among them Tain District in the Bono Region and Atebubu in Bono East.[5][6]
Geography
The Brong Ahafo Region was the second largest region of Ghana, covering 39,557 square kilometres. It was bounded by the Northern Region to the north, the Western and Ashanti regions to the south, Côte d'Ivoire to the west, the Eastern Region to the south-east and the Volta Region to the east. In February 2019 the Bono East and Ahafo regions were created from it, and the part that remained, with its capital at Sunyani, was renamed the Bono Region.[1] The growing region follows the old region's line.
The Drug Nexus in Africa described some of the main supply areas of high-quality cannabis in Ghana as lying in cocoa-growing zones such as Brong Ahafo. A trader interviewed for that study said that the best kind, "no seed dope", grew in the most fertile soils, often marshy and deep inside forests, in Brong Ahafo, Ashanti and the Afram plains.[4]: 23
Cultivation history
Before 2000
The pharmacist T. E. C. Sagoe wrote in 1966 that the police first reported illicit cultivation in Ghana in 1960. The regions from which it was mostly reported were the Western, Eastern, Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions, where it was grown in villages and small towns close to the larger towns where the drug was smoked. A police photograph in his paper shows cannabis harvested from a farm of 270 square yards (about 225 square metres) in the Brong Ahafo area.[2] The UNODC review of 2006 adds that the plant was grown in these regions in the 1960s mainly among other crops.[3]: 71
According to The Drug Nexus in Africa, cultivation in Ghana began in the 1940s and 1950s in the Eastern Region, close to Accra, and then spread north-west to new growing areas in Ashanti, the Afram plains and Brong Ahafo.[4]: 22 The study's trader singled out the marijuana of Wenchi as especially prized, and press reports cited in the study told of a farm of 3 hectares, larger than most, destroyed near the town. The research organisation Observatoire géopolitique des drogues suggested that many cocoa farmers had turned to cannabis; the study judged this impossible to assess.[4]: 23
Since 2000
The UNODC review of 2006 named Brong Ahafo with the Volta, Western and Ashanti regions as the principal growing areas of Ghana.[3]: 71 In October 2019 police from Atebubu destroyed a farm of about two acres (0.8 hectares) at Mem, a suburb of Atebubu in the Bono East Region, after a tip-off from a resident. Its owner, a man of 77, told a reporter that he grew it to sell.[5]
In December 2021 the Bono regional director of the Narcotics Control Commission said that cannabis was being grown in commercial quantities in Tain District, and that this was adding to drug abuse and dealing in the region. He said the commission would soon work with the police and the other security services against the growers.[6] A forensic study of 2022 took cannabis and soil from illegal farms at Nsawkaw and Badu, in the Bono Region, and at Boti in the Eastern Region; the plants had been grown from seed, and the farmers said they had applied fertiliser. The authors describe the three towns as known for illegal cultivation and for large seizures by the security services, and write that most cannabis farms lie in high, rocky areas, which growers often choose so as to hide from them.[7]
Growing Areas
No growing areas documented yet.
Accessions
No accessions documented yet.
Recent news
No news items are recorded for this growing region yet.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Asare Boadu, Kwame (15 February 2019). "Brong Ahafo to be known as Bono Region". Graphic Online. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Sagoe, T. E. C. (1966). "Narcotics control in Ghana: a case study". Bulletin on Narcotics. 18 (2): 5–13.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (2006). "Review of the world cannabis situation" (PDF). Bulletin on Narcotics. LVIII (1 and 2). New York: United Nations (published 2008).
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (March 1999). The Drug Nexus in Africa (PDF) (Report). ODCCP Studies on Drugs and Crime, Monograph series 1. Vienna: United Nations.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Atebubu: 77-year-old weed farmer arrested; 2 acre farm destroyed". Starr FM. 17 October 2019. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Narcotic Commission unhappy about cannabis cultivation in Tain". Ghana News Agency. 16 December 2021. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Douvris, Chris; Bentil, Edward; Ayensu, Isaac; Osei Akoto, Clement; Amponsah, Isaac Kingsley; Adu, Joseph; Bussan, Derek (2022). "Trace metals in cannabis seized by law enforcement in Ghana and multivariate analysis to distinguish among different cannabis farms". Toxics. 10 (10) 567. doi:10.3390/toxics10100567.