malawi

  • 2021 sustainablefuture web coverLearn how lessening the barriers for small farmers while raising them for large companies can help to steer legal cannabis markets in a more sustainable and equitable direction based on principles of community empowerment, social justice, fair(er) trade and sustainable development.

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  • uganda cannabis womanMany African states that persecuted citizens for cannabis related offences for years are now promoting legal cannabis production. Over the past five years 10 countries have passed laws to legalise production for medical and scientific purposes. These include Lesotho, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Uganda, Malawi, Zambia, Ghana, Eswatini, Rwanda and Morocco. South Africa has also legalised the private growing of cannabis plants by adults for their own personal consumption. The cannabis policy liberalisation in Africa has been brought about by two main factors. One is the lobbying by local activists. Cannabis use is still criminalised in most African countries. The other factor is the emergence of the global legal cannabis industry projected to grow to nearly US$200 billion by 2028.

  • cannabis malawiMalawian farmer Ethel Chilembwe has paid out hundreds of dollars, cleared six hectares of land and got ready for the training, but after two years of waiting she has not cultivated a single cannabis plant. Malawi legalised cannabis farming for industrial and medicinal use in February 2020 hoping to take advantage of the booming global demand and move away from the reliance on tobacco as an export crop. Ms Chilembwe, who has been farming tobacco in Kasungu in the west of the country for the last seven years, also scented an opportunity to replace her shrinking returns. She was not the only one - hundreds of other farmers have also been left disappointed.

  • cannabis cultivoMalawi has passed a bill decriminalising cannabis for medicinal and industrial purposes, almost five years after a motion to legalise industrial hemp was adopted. The country follows in the footsteps of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Lesotho, neighbouring south-east African states that have legalised medicinal cannabis, as well as South Africa, where medicinal and recreational use was decriminalised in 2018. “We don’t want to replicate what has happened in the tobacco industry. Malawians should participate, not as tenants, but as equal partners in this new sector,” said Boniface Kadzamira, the former MP who tabled the topic in 2015, who wants cannabis products to be processed in-country.