Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast
Côte d'Ivoire
Taï National Park
Capital	Yamoussoukro
Continent	Africa
Subregion	West Africa
Cannabis Status
Legal Status	Illegal
Status Since	2022
Enforcement	Cultivation 5 to 10 years' imprisonment and a fine; possession for own use 1 to 3 months and a fine
Documentation
Growing Regions	0
Growing Areas	0
Accessions	1
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) is a country in West Africa where cannabis is grown illegally, mostly on small plots hidden in the cocoa plantations of the south-west.^: 876–877 It was used locally from the 1950s, but its cultivation spread only from the second half of the 1980s, most of all after the prices of coffee and cocoa collapsed in 1988 and 1989.^: 86 Growers fetch their seed from neighbouring Ghana; Ivorian dealers buy from Ghanaian traffickers.^: 877–878

The drug law of 13 June 2022 punishes unauthorised cultivation with five to ten years' imprisonment and a fine. Possession for one's own use carries one to three months and a fine.^{: arts. 3, 10} Cannabis is the drug that the police seize most often.

Geography

Cannabis grows throughout the country, in the forest zone and in the savanna, but most of all on the old cocoa pioneer fronts of the south-west.^: 876–877 The first plantations are said to have appeared in the Bas-Sassandra region, on the pioneer fronts of the sub-prefectures of Méadji and Sassandra.^: 876 In the late 1990s it was grown and concealed in the cocoa plantations of the south, east and west, mainly for local consumption.^: 23 In the department of Agnibilékrou, on the border with Ghana, some cannabis is grown, but most of the town's supply comes from the eastern part of Ghana.^: 131

Demographics

The interior minister said in 2022 that the most common drugs in the country were cannabis, psychotropic substances, heroin and cocaine. The criminologist Kafé Guy Christian Kroubo cites the national statistics institute for 1,365,448 drug users in the country in 2020 and 12,392 dealers employed by its fumoirs, the smoking dens.^: 871 In Agnibilékrou, a study of 2025 found dried cannabis herb and its derivatives the drugs most used, under the names "No 6" or "Boka", "Odi Kush" and "SCA".^: 128

Agriculture

The geographer Éric Léonard surveyed 41 cannabis growers in the south-west between April 1994 and June 1995. Their plots were almost always smaller than half a hectare, two thirds of them smaller than a quarter. They were easily hidden in a cocoa plantation, woody regrowth or a field of cassava.^: 86 Two or three crops were grown a year.^: 89 Half of the growers worked as contractors on a relative's holding.^: 88 An investigation of 41 growers in the south-west over the same months by the Observatoire géopolitique des drogues found that about two thirds had begun after 1990 and only 8 per cent earlier; more than a third said they had begun because cocoa and coffee prices fell; half had begun at the prompting of cocoa planters and wholesalers.^: 50

Léonard found that no crop within a farmer's reach could compete with cannabis for income per hectare. In 1995 a tenth of a hectare, sold by the sack over two cycles, brought 3 to 4 million CFA francs a year, the value of 10 to 13 tonnes of cocoa.^: 89 In Kroubo's account plots cover half a hectare to a hectare, hidden among cocoa, rubber, cassava or maize or in forest. A good harvest gives about 50 sacks of 100 kilograms, called bôrô, from half a hectare.^: 877

Cannabis in Ivory Coast

History

Léonard found that cannabis had been used locally from the 1950s in the regions drawn early into trade, on the border between forest and savanna and on the coast. Its cultivation spread only in the second half of the 1980s. Ninety-two per cent of the marijuana growers he surveyed had begun after the collapse of coffee and cocoa prices in 1988 and 1989.^: 86 The crop seems to have been brought to the south-west by Ghanaian migrants settled on the pioneer front in the late 1970s; the growers' selected seed was rumoured to come from seed farms in Ghana.^: 96 Léonard attributed the weakness, even absence, of repression in the mid-1990s to the weight of the cocoa economy and to Ivory Coast's standing with Western governments and donors.^: 88

Cultivation

The growers Léonard surveyed raised two kinds of cannabis. The more valued was sold as dried leaves and flowers, marijuana; the other was sold fermented, at about half the price, but ripened in three to four months instead of five. Twenty-five of the 41 growers sold a fermented product.^: 86 Growers fetch seed from Ghana and share it among acquaintances to sow their own fields.^: 877

Preparations and consumption

In Agnibilékrou in 2025 a joint of "No 6" or "Boka", herb with seeds, cost 500 francs and a sachet of "Odi Kush" or "SCA", a derivative, 1,000 francs.^: 129 In 1995 a dose ready to smoke cost 200 CFA francs in the towns of the south-west and 300 to 400 francs in Abidjan, against about 50 francs in Accra.^: 96

Trade and commerce

Local production does not meet national demand. Ivorian dealers buy from Ghanaian traffickers, who are known for their skill in preparing and supplying cannabis.^: 878 In 1995 a kilogram of marijuana bought at the farm in Ghana for 2,000 to 3,000 cedis (850 to 1,250 CFA francs) sold for 8,000 CFA francs in Ivory Coast.^: 96 Marijuana travelled in bales of fresh kola nuts, which were seldom checked because opening them would spoil the nuts.^: 88 From one informant's account, Léonard estimated that 250 to 300 tonnes passed through a single trafficking channel each year.^: 93

Legal status

The law of 1988, Loi n° 88-686 of 22 July 1988, punished the unauthorised cultivation of narcotic plants with ten to twenty years' imprisonment and a fine of 1 to 100 million francs.^{: art. 2} The interministerial anti-drug committee, the Comité interministériel de lutte anti-drogue (CILAD), called it in 2024 "essentiellement répressif", essentially repressive.

Loi n° 2022-407 of 13 June 2022 repealed it. The new law classes plants and substances in four tables, taken from the updated tables of the international conventions that Ivory Coast has ratified. Unauthorised cultivation, production or preparation of drugs in tables 1 and 2 carries five to ten years' imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 to 50 million francs; so do their sale and transport. Supplying drugs to another person for personal use carries one to three years. Holding a narcotic plant or substance for one's own use carries one to three months and a fine of 50,000 to 500,000 francs.^{: arts. 2–4, 7, 10, 45, 47}

Ivory Coast acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 10 July 1962 and became a party to it as amended by the 1972 Protocol on 28 February 1973. It acceded to the Convention on Psychotropic Substances on 11 April 1984 and ratified the 1988 Convention on 25 November 1991.

Enforcement

In 2021 the anti-drug services seized 10 tonnes of cannabis; in the first half of 2022 they seized more than seven tonnes. In operations against the "Microbes" and "Gnambros" gangs of Abidjan from 2019 to 2022, 61.32 tonnes of cannabis were seized and 3,363 fumoirs destroyed. The police destroyed 26 cannabis fields over the same years.^{: 876, 878} The police drug squad, the Direction de la Police des Stupéfiants et des Drogues, reported in 2025 that cannabis was the substance it seized most often.

Growing Regions

Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki: No growing regions documented yet.

Growing Areas

Landrace cannabis growing areas currently documented on the wiki: No growing areas documented yet.

Accessions

List

Accession ID	Name	Priority	Collected	Area
VIB-CIV-UNK-0100000001	Côte d'Ivoire General Population

Conservation status

The botanist Laurent Aké Assi gathered cannabis at Agbongoua on 26 November 1970 and in the university botanical garden in Abidjan on 15 March 1978; the sheets are in the herbarium of the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny. G.-A. Ambe gathered a specimen on 16 December 1995 in a cultivated field at Kênêgbê, about 45 kilometres west of Séguéla on the road to Touba; it is held by Meise Botanic Garden. The Vibes Collective catalogued a landrace from Côte d'Ivoire in its strainguide by January 2008.

Recent news

No recent news items.

See also

• Ghana
• Landrace Cannabis
• Nigeria