Democratic Republic of the Congo
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| Democratic Republic of the Congo | |
|---|---|
| République démocratique du Congo | |
| |
| A village on a river in the Congo rainforest | |
| Capital | Kinshasa |
| Continent | Africa |
| Subregion | Central Africa |
| Cannabis Status | |
| Legal Status | Illegal (medical and scientific use licensed) |
| Status Since | 2021 |
| Enforcement | Criminal outside licensed medical and scientific use |
| Documentation | |
| Growing Regions | 0 |
| Growing Areas | 1 |
| Accessions | 13 |
| Conservation | |
| Populations | none documented yet |
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a country in Central Africa spanning the basin of the Congo River. Two cannabis names are used there, each in several forms: diamba in the west and bangi in the north, east and centre.[1]
At Kisantu the Jesuit botanist Justin Gillet entered Cannabis sativa in his 1910 flora of the region under the headword diamba, distinguishing it from diamba di nseke, savanna hemp, a legume that merely resembles it.[2] Three collectors working in three parts of the country between 1935 and 1939 each wrote a form of bangi on their herbarium labels.
The geographer Chris S. Duvall dates the arrival of cannabis in Africa from South Asia to about a thousand years ago; his The African Roots of Marijuana gives a chapter to the Bena-Riamba, the nineteenth-century Kasai cannabis society.[3]
Cannabis is prohibited except for licensed medical and scientific use.[4] Herbarium sheets of the plant gathered in the country in the colonial period are held at Meise Botanic Garden.[5][6]
Geography
The country is dominated by the basin of the Congo River and its rainforest, with highlands along the eastern rift.[citation needed] Herbarium sheets of the plant come from the west, around Gillet's base at Kisantu and from Banana at the river's mouth; others were gathered on the middle Congo at Yangambi,[6] in Bas-Uele in the far north[7] and in North Kivu in the east.[8]
Louis 16015 was gathered in 1939 at about 470 metres on a Congo River sandbank at Yangambi, in a one-year-old stand of Echinochloa dry for two months; its field label is that of the Institut national pour l'étude agronomique du Congo belge.[6]
The geographer Ann Laudati studied the cannabis trade in the conflict-affected east of the country through four months of qualitative fieldwork.[9]
Demographics
Communities with cannabis relationships
On the herbarium labels, bangi was recorded in Azande in the far north, on De Wulf 554, where the label spells the people Avande; as Mbangi in Swahili with a closely similar Kinande form in the east, on Gille 77; and as BANGI in Turumbu on the middle Congo, on Louis 16015.[7][8][6]
In the west the name is diamba, in Kikongo. W. Holman Bentley's Kongo dictionary of 1887, compiled for the Baptist mission at San Salvador, glosses diamba as Indian hemp in both directions and records three words for a pipe used to smoke it, nsaka, mbaya and ntimpu.[10] Brian du Toit's linguistic map of African cannabis names separates dagga in the south, forms of bangi in the east and centre and forms of diamba in the west; on it riamba or chamba are the usual forms in the Congo and northern Angola.[1]
The label of De Graer 700, gathered in 1936, gives the local name Mauzeliba among the Bamemeli and records under usage indigène that it is a kind of hemp smoked locally, that people prefer to smoke another species called Boko and that Mauzeliba gives them violent headaches. The wording is De Graer's.[11]
Agriculture
Gillet's Kisantu flora states that hemp was cultivated only for the use smokers made of it, a use which in the flora's words left them "de plus en plus hébétés et abrutis" (more and more dazed and stupefied).[2] Gillet's own 1908 sheet from Wombali is labelled Chanvre indigène, indigenous hemp, in his hand.[5]
In the present the crop is a smallholder one in the east, grown among other crops.[9][verification needed]
Cannabis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
History
Duvall places the arrival of cannabis in Africa from South Asia about a thousand years ago and its spread within the continent largely after 1500.[3]: 11–12[12] Du Toit proposed that Swahili and Arab traders carried the plant inland from the east coast and that traders from Zanzibar appear to have introduced it among the Bashilange of the Kasai after the 1850s, where it was called rhiamba. He described the origin of riamba as still under investigation.[1]
Duvall devotes his sixth chapter, "Society Overturned: The Bena Riamba", to what the Bashilange made of cannabis.[3]
Over the last century of transatlantic shipping, roughly 1760 to 1860, captives from western Central Africa outnumbered those from any other region, and slavers there supplied mariamba in managing them.[3] R. O. Clarke's 1851 notice from Sierra Leone describes diamba grown chiefly by people he calls Congoes and their descendants, whose seed had been brought to the colony.[13]
The herbarium sheets at Meise run from the Congo Free State, where Gillet gathered between 1901 and 1908 and Émile and Marcel Laurent in 1903, into the Belgian Congo, where Verschueren gathered at Banana in 1913, De Wulf in 1935, De Graer in 1936, Gille in 1937 and Louis at Yangambi in 1939.[14][5][15][16][7][11][8][6]
Cultivation
The labels record the sex of the plants: pistillate plants on the Butala, Banza-Boma and Wombali sheets, staminate on De Wulf 554, De Graer 700 and Gille 77, and both sexes on Gillet 2027.[15][17][5][7][11][8][14] Louis 16015 is determined as Cf. Cannabis sativa L., with the Determinavit line left blank and the specimen sterile.[6]
In the east, cannabis is grown inside Virunga National Park. National Geographic reported in 2017 that members of a Bambuti community near Goma tended plants in secret in the park's forests.[18] The park's rangers said in 2011 that a Rwandan militia sowed cannabis on forest land in the park cleared for charcoal.[19]
Preparations and consumption
Religious and cultural use
A 1983 survey of plants used against respiratory illness in children recorded diamba in Kikongo and nkaya diamba in Kiyanzi: for childhood asthma the smoke of burnt leaves is inhaled; or the leaves are steeped in boiling water, the steam inhaled and the liquid drunk with meals twice a day.[20]
Trade and commerce
Laudati writes that reporting on cannabis in the region has concentrated on the effects of the drug on combatants and on the plant's place in the war economy, so that "drugs and violence are seen to go together, destabilising society, creating insecurity, and spreading HIV". Drawing on four months of fieldwork on the trade in the east, Laudati argues that the dangers of an entanglement with the drug are instead, as one informant put it, the result of "security".[9] Her chapter in Drugs in Africa examines the networks of the trade at greater length.[21]
In 2019 a Canadian pharmaceutical company announced that it had obtained, in January 2017, a licence to grow psychotropic and non-psychotropic cannabis on more than 10,000 acres in the country. Duvall reads the episode as the state loosening drug control for a foreign company while the violence around Congolese growers continued.[22]
Legal status
Cannabis may be used for medical and scientific purposes only. The governing instrument is the Arrêté ministériel n°1250/CAB/MIN/S/0002/DC/OWE/2021 of 27 February 2021, which set the conditions for the exploitation of narcotics and psychotropic substances for medical and scientific purposes, as amended and supplemented by Arrêté ministériel n°1250/CAB/MIN/SPHP/038/DCA/CPh/2022 of 24 November 2022. Article 2 of the amended text authorises exploitation "uniquement et exclusivement" for medical and scientific purposes, so that cultivation, production, possession, use and marketing for any other purpose "demeurent strictement interdites".[4]
Following the 1961 Single Convention, the instrument defines cannabis as the flowering or fruiting tops of the plant, excluding seeds and leaves not accompanied by tops, from which the resin has not been extracted.[4] Among the instruments it cites are the Ordonnance n°27/bis/Hyg. of 15 March 1933 on the practice of pharmacy, at articles 30 to 54 and 63 to 64, and, in international law, the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 as amended by the 1972 Protocol together with the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances.[4] Pharmaceutical regulation sits with the Autorité congolaise de réglementation pharmaceutique, created by Décret n°20/002 of 5 March 2020.[4]
The Commission multisectorielle permanente de coordination des activités liées à l'usage médical et scientifique du cannabis was created by Arrêté ministériel n°1250/CAB/MIN/SPHP/039/DCA/CPh/2022 of 24 November 2022, and its members were appointed by Arrêté ministériel n°1250/CAB/MIN/SPHP/043/DCA/2023 of 3 March 2023.[23]
Growing Regions
No growing regions documented yet.
Growing Areas
| Growing Area | Has growing region |
|---|---|
| Virunga National Park |
Accessions
| Accession ID | Name | Collected | Area |
|---|---|---|---|
| De Graer 700 (1936) | De Graer 700 herbarium specimen, Mbunga (1936) | ||
| De Wulf 554 (1935) | De Wulf 554 herbarium specimen, Bas-Uele (1935) | ||
| EAG-COD-NOR-0120240001 | Masisi-Rutshuru 2024 | ||
| Gille 77 (1937) | Gille 77 herbarium specimen, Beni Territory (1937) | ||
| Gillet 2027 (1901) | Gillet 2027 herbarium specimen, Congo (1901) | ||
| Gillet s.n., Banza-Boma (1901) | Gillet s.n. herbarium specimen, Banza-Boma (1901) | ||
| Gillet s.n., Wombali (1908) | Gillet s.n. herbarium specimen, Wombali (1908) | ||
| Laurent s.n., Butala (1903) | Laurent s.n. herbarium specimen, Butala (1903) | ||
| Laurent s.n., Manglié (1903) | Laurent s.n. herbarium specimen, Manglié (1903) | ||
| Louis 16015 (1939) | Louis 16015 herbarium specimen, Yangambi (1939) | ||
| RSC-COD-UNK-0119900001 | Congolese | ||
| VIB-COD-UNK-0100000001 | Black Congolese General Population | ||
| Verschueren 426 (1913) | Verschueren 426 herbarium specimen, Banana (1913) |
Conservation status
Recent news
No recent news items.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 du Toit, Brian M. (1975). "Dagga: The History and Ethnographic Setting of Cannabis sativa in Southern Africa". In Rubin, Vera (ed.). Cannabis and Culture. The Hague: Mouton. pp. 81–116. doi:10.1515/9783110812060.81.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Gillet, J.; Pâque, E. (1910). Plantes principales de la région de Kisantu: leur nom indigène, leur nom scientifique, leurs usages (PDF). Annales du Musée du Congo Belge, Botanique, Série V (in français). Brussels: Spineux. p. 12.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Duvall, Chris S. (2019). The African Roots of Marijuana. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. doi:10.1215/9781478004530. ISBN 978-1-4780-0394-6.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 "Arrêté ministériel n°1250/CAB/MIN/SPHP/038/DCA/CPh/2022 du 24 novembre 2022 modifiant et complétant l'Arrêté ministériel n°1250/CAB/MIN/S/0002/DC/OWE/2021 du 27 février 2021 fixant les conditions d'exploitation des stupéfiants et des substances psychotropes à des fins médicales et scientifiques". LEGANET.CD (in français). Retrieved 23 September 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Digitised sheet BR0000014662690: Cannabis sativa L. (Gillet s.n., Wombali (1908))". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 23 September 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 "Digitised sheet BR0000014662768: Cannabis sativa L. (Louis 16015)". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 23 September 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 "Digitised sheet BR0000014662782: Cannabis sativa L. (De Wulf 554)". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 23 September 2026.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 "Digitised sheet BR0000014662805: Cannabis sativa L. (Gille 77)". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 23 September 2026.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Laudati, Ann A. (2016). "Securing (in)security: relinking violence and the trade in cannabis sativa in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo". Review of African Political Economy. 43 (148). doi:10.1080/03056244.2016.1179180.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Bentley, W. Holman (1887). Dictionary and Grammar of the Kongo Language, as Spoken at San Salvador, the Ancient Capital of the Old Kongo Empire, West Africa. London: Baptist Missionary Society and Trübner. s.v. Diamba, Hemp, Nsaka, Mbaya and Ntimpu.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 "Digitised sheet BR0000014662775: Cannabis sativa L. (De Graer 700)". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 23 September 2026.
- ↑ Duvall, C.S. (2017). "Cannabis and tobacco in precolonial and colonial Africa". Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. doi:10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.013.44.
- ↑ Clarke, R. O. (1851). "Short notice of the African Plant Diamba, commonly called Congo Tobacco". Hooker's Journal of Botany and Kew Garden Miscellany. 3: 9–11.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Digitised sheet BR0000014662676: Cannabis sativa L. (Gillet 2027)". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Digitised sheet BR0000014662713: Cannabis sativa L. (Laurent s.n., Butala (1903))". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ "Digitised sheet BR0000014662645: Cannabis sativa L. (Verschueren 426)". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ "Digitised sheet BR0000014662683: Cannabis sativa L. (Gillet s.n., Banza-Boma (1901))". Meise IIIF image service. Meise Botanic Garden. Retrieved 3 October 2026.
- ↑ Strochlic, Nina (22 March 2017). "Why Pygmies are dealing weed to survive in the Congo". National Geographic. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Lovgren, Stefan (29 April 2011). "Marijuana trade threatens African gorilla refuge". National Geographic. Retrieved 21 October 2026.
- ↑ Disengomoka, I.; Delaveau, P. (1983). "Medicinal plants used for child's respiratory diseases in Zaire. Part I". Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 8 (3): 257–263. doi:10.1016/0378-8741(83)90063-6.
- ↑ Laudati, Ann A. (2016). "Out of the Shadows: Negotiations and Networks in the Cannabis Trade in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo". Drugs in Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 161–181. doi:10.1057/9781137321916_9.
- ↑ Duvall, Chris S. (2019). "A brief agricultural history of cannabis in Africa, from prehistory to canna-colony". EchoGéo (48). doi:10.4000/echogeo.17599.
- ↑ "Arrêté ministériel n°1250/CAB/MIN/SPHP/043/DCA/2023 du 03 mars 2023 portant nomination des membres de la Commission Multisectorielle Permanente de Coordination des activités liées à l'usage médical et scientifique du cannabis (CMPC)". LEGANET.CD (in français). Retrieved 23 September 2026.