The data that we do (not) have: studying drug trafficking and organised crime in Africa (original) (raw)

Trends in Organized Crime

How do we know what we (claim to) know about Africa's organised crime? Much of our understanding of the phenomenon is filtered through the representation of a growing threat carried out by criminal groups specialized in smuggling and trafficking commodities, who exploit vulnerabilities in state capacity (Interpol 2018). African states are often depicted as weak and possibly prone to criminal capture, thereby offering to sophisticated and powerful criminal cartels a soft belly in terms of interdiction capacity and effectiveness (for example, Naim 2012). The illicit trade of profitable goods and natural resources (timber, diamonds, gold, protected wildlife) typically takes centre-stage, fuelling a narrative that coalesces criminal networks, greedy insurgents and violent entrepreneurs. Within this framework, drugs constitute the quintessential illicit market, one that typically involves domestic and transnational criminal organisations, and armed groups vying for protection and extraction. Law enforcement agencies tend to consider any seizure of drugs as an indication of organised crime activity; the drug metrics that they produce are usually considered sensitive data, and therefore they are not easily accessible to researchers. For reasons that are not difficult to understand, those units that investigate the illicit drug business tend to perceive themselves as the bastions in checking serious crime: so much so that the law enforcement officers employed in 'narcotics units' often exhibit quite distinctive attitudes and special operational protocols. At policy making level, the genealogy of initiatives to counter drug-related crime has typically been presented as a core activity in the fight against organised crime (Nadelman 1990).