Senegal

Senegal
Sénégal
Mangrove islands in the Saloum Delta
Capital	Dakar
Continent	Africa
Subregion	West Africa
Cannabis Status
Legal Status	Illegal
Status Since	1997
Enforcement	Cultivation banned (Code des drogues, art. 8); the army and gendarmerie destroy fields in Casamance
Documentation
Growing Regions	1
Growing Areas	0
Accessions	1
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Senegal is a country in West Africa where cannabis, called yamba or chanvre indien (Indian hemp), is grown illegally. In 1999 the southern area of Casamance was the country's main cannabis-producing area, and the strip along the southern border of Gambia up to the islands of the Karone river the second.^: 23 By 2006 the growing areas also included the Niayes north of Dakar, the valley of the Senegal River, the region of Kolda and the islands of the Saloum Delta.^: 71

The drug code of 1997 bans the growing of the cannabis plant throughout the country.^{: art. 8} A law of 2007 raised the penalty for cultivating and trafficking the drugs of its first schedule to between 10 and 20 years of hard labour.^{: arts 95, 97} Army units destroy cannabis fields in Casamance, where a separatist movement, the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), has fought the state since 1982.^: 1

Geography

In 1962, by the account of the psychiatrists Henri Collomb, Moussa Diop and Henri Ayats, Indian hemp, amba, was grown almost everywhere in Senegal: around Dakar, Rufisque, Sangalkam and Cayar; around Thiès, Boro and Mecké; at Tivaouane, which they thought a wholesale redistribution centre for the whole Niayes region; at Richard-Toll and at Sédhiou in Casamance; and around Diourbel and Kaolack.^: 139 The Niayes were formerly the favoured ground for the crop; by 2018 the main producing zones were the Karone islands in Casamance and the islands of the Saloum in Kaolack region.^: 3

Casamance is the part of Senegal that the Gambia separates from the rest of the country. In the early 2000s the main cannabis-growing areas of Casamance were in the north and west of Ziguinchor region, around Kafountine and the Karone Isles, at the mouth of the Casamance River.^: 11 Since 2015 the army has reported destroying fields further inland, in the north of Bignona department near the Gambian border, and in 2025 at Saré Koundian in the region of Kolda, near the border with Guinea. In 2025 a commissioner of the Office central de répression du trafic illicite des stupéfiants (OCRTIS), the police drug office, said that the Indian hemp consumed in the country was grown mainly in the south.

Demographics

Communities with cannabis relationships

The growers around Sédhiou were often Peul or Malinké.^: 139 The smokers Collomb and his colleagues studied, 107 patients of the neuropsychiatric service of the Fann hospital in Dakar up to July 1961, were almost all young men, more than 80 per cent of them under 30 and living in towns. Wolof were under-represented relative to Toucouleur and Lébou, and the authors thought cannabis smoking far less common in the villages.^{: 139, 141–142}

On the Karone islands, the sociologists Benoît Tine and Victor Nfansou Diatta studied the four villages of the Bliss islands in the commune of Kafountine: Kailo, Boune, Boko and Saloulou, with between 86 and 427 inhabitants each.^: 1 At Kouba, a village in the mangroves of Casamance that no road reaches, villagers told Agence France-Presse in 2020 that there was no road to market their vegetables, and one said that cannabis profits paid for the children's schooling.

In 2014 the people arrested for drug offences in Senegal and five other West African countries tended to be small-scale dealers in cannabis or its users, who spent long periods in pre-trial detention.^: 32

Agriculture

In 1962 the crop around Sédhiou was very scattered, with few plants in any one place, hidden in fields of millet or maize that were generally hard to reach.^: 139 At Kouba in 2020 large plots of cannabis lay beside the rice fields; the women of the village separated the stalks by hand and dried them on tin roofs, and the harvest was sorted into bales for traffickers who came by canoe.

The government's statement of reasons for the drug code of 1997 says that the spread of cannabis had led farmers to abandon several food crops.^: 1 An NGO officer in Ziguinchor told the geographer Martin Evans that a farming family growing cannabis under contract to buyers could earn twice what it would earn from groundnuts.^: 22 In 2015 the commander of the army's fifth military zone said that the people of northern Bignona were tempted by Indian hemp at the expense of their traditional food and cash crops.

Tine and Diatta estimated that the four villages of the Bliss islands produced at least 67.5 tonnes of cannabis in a season, and that the commune of Kafountine as a whole might produce several hundred tonnes.^: 3

Cannabis in Senegal

History

The geographer Chris S. Duvall cites primary sources for psychoactive cannabis in 19th-century Gambia and Senegal, against Brian du Toit's statement of 1980 that there was no evidence of cannabis in West Africa before the Second World War.^: 13 Duvall counts West Africa among the areas where cannabis arrived relatively recently.^{: para. 15} A review by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2006 says that the drug may have been introduced to Senegal earlier in the 20th century by Arab traders.^: 71 Reviewing the study of 1962, Joseph Tubiana put forward the working hypothesis that the use of Indian hemp, common in North Africa, had been spread in West Africa by Muslims; 101 of the 107 patients in that study were Muslims.

Under French rule amba was placed on the schedule of poisonous substances by a decree of April 1951.^: 144 The Dakar police recorded 86 yamba cases involving 115 people in 1956, 112 cases involving 130 people in 1957 and 48 cases in 1958, and arrested about 15 smokers a month in 1959 and 1960. Collomb and his colleagues read the changes as reflecting the strength of repression, not of consumption.^: 140–141 A law of 5 February 1963 punished the growing, holding, trade and use of Indian hemp. The law of 1972 that replaced the 1963 law was presented by the Ministry of the Interior as a response to drug use that "dépasse l'usage du Yamba" (goes beyond the use of yamba).

The armed forces were deployed on the Karone islands in the 1980s and earlier, destroying fields around the villages and burning the stocks found in granaries; growing there became massive in the 1990s.^: 3–4 The rebellion in Casamance began in 1982.^: 1 Cannabis, with cashews one of the main export crops of Casamance, was grown there before the rebellion, and its trafficking increased with the economic depression the conflict caused.^: 10–11 Whether the rebels drew much income from it is disputed. Evans judged the significance of cannabis in the war economy debatable and its revenues to the rebels probably overstated, and the UNODC review of 2006 wrote that the issue may have been exaggerated for political purposes.^: 11: 71 Duvall wrote in 2019 that a rebel group in Senegal persisted through the 1980s and 1990s because it controlled a cannabis production zone.^{: para. 22}

Cultivation

In the late 1990s, by the account of a United Nations study of 1999, Ghanaian sponsors working out of the Gambia supplied seed and inputs to farmers in the extremely fertile south of Casamance for a share of the profit.^: 23 In the early 2000s growing around Kafountine and the Karone Isles was well established and organised, and too lucrative for farmers to give up despite prosecution, anti-drug campaigns and incentives for other crops.^: 11 The police put the rise in their seizures in 2021 down to the spread of a variety called verte ("green") or karones and the number of growing zones in the south of the country.

In March 2015 an operation in northern Bignona destroyed fields that ran "à perte de vue" (as far as the eye could see) and seized between 2.5 and 3 tonnes of the drug. In June 2025 the Minister of the Interior, Jean-Baptiste Tine, said that about 400 hectares and 4,000 kilograms of Indian hemp had been seized in that year's national operation.

Preparations and consumption

In 1962 the plant was dried while still standing, chopped (flowers, leaves and even stem) and smoked as cigarettes rolled in newspaper; some users drank an infusion of the leaves. Dakar smokers judged the local product much inferior to that of the Ivory Coast. Yamba was sold in the street in small paper cones: an ordinary cone cost 25 to 30 francs and made one large or two medium cigarettes. Smokers met in small groups in abandoned houses, old buses or on the beaches. There were no yamba dens like those for opium, though one was reported in a crowded Dakar courtyard in May 1957.^: 139–140 Some masons and drivers told Collomb and his colleagues that yamba sharpened the mind and took away fatigue.^: 142

In 2025 an OCRTIS commissioner called Indian hemp the drug most consumed in the country. The verte variety seized at Sédhiou in March 2026 was packed in bricks of one kilogram.

Religious and cultural use

Collomb and his colleagues found the religions of their patients to match those of the population of Dakar.^: 142 Tubiana answered that the near-total share of Muslims among the patients supported his hypothesis that the practice was largely confined to Muslims. The anthropologist Paolo Bocci, studying the music of the Baay Fall, a group within the Muridiyya brotherhood, found the smoking of marijuana among the practices that some Baay Fall themselves contested.^{: 1, 21} In Casamance in 2026 an official told Agence France-Presse that people who said they depended on the cannabis trade had asked the imams whether Islam allowed them to grow it.

Trade and commerce

In 1962 hawkers brought the drug into Dakar at night by lorry and bus, and some was said to be exported from Dakar to northern countries.^: 139–140 In the late 1990s cannabis from the south was shipped to Dakar or exported abroad through its port.^: 23 Evans thought the largest market was probably the Gambia, reached by land and sea, and that some Casamance cannabis also supplied the cities of northern Senegal.^: 11 Cannabis resin was also produced in Senegal by 2006.^: 71 In 2007 significant outlets for cannabis from Senegal were Dakar, other Senegalese towns and the Gambia.^: 6 In 2014 the West Africa Commission on Drugs wrote that cannabis had been grown for consumption and export in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal for decades and that the crop provided significant revenue to small farmers.^: 28

At Kouba in 2020 villagers said a kilogram fetched between 15,000 and 30,000 CFA francs, against 500 for a kilogram of onions. Cannabis from northern Bignona also goes south. In March 2026 the drug squad at Sédhiou seized 179 kilograms after a tip that traffickers were using bicycles to carry it from Nord-Sindian to Bafatá in Guinea-Bissau; the courier arrested was to be paid 150,000 CFA francs on delivery. The customs service for Ziguinchor, Kolda and Sédhiou seized 2,126 kilograms of Indian hemp in 2024, against 489.8 kilograms in 2023.

Legal status

The drug code, Law 97-18 of 1 December 1997, bans the growing of the opium poppy, the coca bush and the cannabis plant throughout the country and requires the owner or occupier of land to destroy any such plants or report them to the agricultural service or the police.^{: art. 8} As enacted, it punished growing and producing the high-risk drugs of its first schedule with five to 10 years' imprisonment and a fine of three times the value of the drugs seized. Buying, holding or growing a small quantity for personal use carries two months to one year. Use outside medical prescription is banned.^{: arts 95, 108–109} The statement of reasons says that the use of cannabis for medical purposes, tolerated until recently, had become a cause of addiction among the young.^: 1

A private member's bill introduced by the deputy Abdou Latif Guèye, adopted by the National Assembly on 30 November 2007 and promulgated as Law 2007-31 of 27 December 2007, raised the penalty for growing, producing and trafficking the high-risk drugs of the first schedule to 10 to 20 years of hard labour, and barred courts from going below the minimum sentence for those offences.^{: arts 95, 97, 103 ter} In 2014 the president of the magistrates' union blamed the law for the growing number of cases sent to the assize court. The leader of the Benno Bokk Yaakaar group of deputies, Moustapha Diakhaté, wanted it revised, and the Islamic NGO Jamra wanted it strengthened. In 2016 the Minister of Justice, Sidiki Kaba, called drugs the main cause of overcrowding in the prisons. Critics in the judiciary objected that the law made no distinction between Indian hemp and hard drugs. The law's author, Abdou Latif Guèye, had founded Jamra.

In June 2014 the Minister of the Interior, Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo, said he was personally against decriminalising drug use, after the West Africa Commission on Drugs had recommended it. In January 2020 Seydi Gassama, director of Amnesty International in Senegal, proposed legalising the consumption of Indian hemp, pointing to prisons overcrowded with young smokers; Jamra and the president of the magistrates' union, Souleymane Téliko, rejected the proposal. In 2025 an OCRTIS commissioner called for the drug code to be reformed to cover new substances.

Senegal acceded to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs on 24 January 1964 and was a party to it as amended by the 1972 Protocol from 25 March 1974. It acceded to the Convention on Psychotropic Substances on 10 June 1977, and signed the 1988 Convention on 20 December 1988 and ratified it on 27 November 1989.

Enforcement

The Interministerial Committee for the Fight against Drugs (CILD), which coordinates policy, and OCRTIS, a police office dealing only with drugs, were created by decrees of 17 December 1997.^: 1–2 In 2026 the coordinator of the CILD, Idrissa Cissé, said that Senegal's policy aimed to reduce the harm and threat of drugs and praised the army for destroying hemp fields where needed.

Nearly 70 tonnes of cannabis were seized in 1998, over 7 tonnes in 1999 and just under 5 tonnes in 2002.^: 71 In 2013, 11,223 kilograms of Indian hemp were seized and 4,560 people charged, 2,930 of them as users and 1,630 as traffickers. In 2021 the police made their largest seizures of Indian hemp in the regions of Thiès (929.1 kg), Kolda (377 kg), Dakar (186.9 kg), Sédhiou (144.6 kg) and Diourbel (128.5 kg). In June 2026 the Minister of the Interior, Mouhamadou Makhtar Cissé, said that the security forces had seized about 25 tonnes of Indian hemp in 2025 and 2026.

Growing Regions

Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki:

Region
Casamance

Growing Areas

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

Accessions

List

Accession ID	Name	Collected	Region
Vanden Berghen 9803 (1993)	Vanden Berghen 9803 herbarium specimen, Abéné, Basse-Casamance (1993)	23 August 1993	Casamance

Conservation status

Meise Botanic Garden holds a sheet gathered by C. Vanden Berghen at Abéné, in Basse-Casamance, on 23 August 1993, from a plant grown in a market garden in a hollow of the coastal dunes "pour la drogue" (for the drug). The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris holds an undated sheet gathered by Kaichinger at "Kaolak"; a leaf was sampled from it in March 2021 for C. J. Grassa of Harvard.

Recent news

No recent news items.

See also

• Casamance
• The African Roots of Marijuana (2019)
• Diamba
• Ghana
• Ivory Coast
• Landrace Cannabis
• Nigeria