South American drug cartels take over West African country

Savvy drug traffickers are taking advantage of the impoverished West-African nation of Guinea-Bissau to set up shop in the Eastern hemisphere.

Guinea-Bissau is an ideal African springboard for Latin American mafias to smuggle large quantities of cocaine into the wealthy European Union market.

Conditions in this small former Portuguese colony in West Africa are optimal. There is minimal surveillance, not a single prison worthy of the name, a weak state and officials susceptible to bribery and corruption.

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UNODC experts calculate that one-quarter of the cocaine consumed in Europe is trafficked through West Africa, especially Guinea-Bissau. The trade in cocaine is estimated at $2 billion, that is to say, nearly twice the country’s GDP of just over $1 billion a year.

However, in the streets of the richest capital cities in Europe its value could be as high as $20 billion, or 10 times as much.

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“Today, Guinea-Bissau is literally fenced in. We must entertain no illusions: the state could collapse,” said Antonio María Costa, the head of UNODC.

Costa maintains that South American traffickers chose Guinea-Bissau partly because of its convenient location in West Africa, but mainly because its authorities are incapable of combating organised crime.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Guinea-Bissau is one of the five poorest nations in the world. Seeing that Guinea-Bissau doesn't even have a single prison, and that all the officials can be easily bribed, sounds like a good place to build a worldwide criminal empire. Can we all say "Narco-state?" I knew you could...