Guinea-Bissau: Cocaine’s traffic hub

“West Africa is among the world’s poorest, least developed and most politically unstable regions. This patchwork of coastal nation-states has long been exploited by international profiteers, from the slave traders who fed off it for centuries to the European colonizers who later tried to sculpt tropical replicas of France, England and Portugal.Today it is buffeted by another outside force: the $70-billion global cocaine market. As much as a third of the cocaine that moves from South America to Europe every year goes through West Africa. Since 2005, cocaine with a wholesale value of more than $7 billion has passed through this region, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-africa-drugs16-2009nov16,0,7227502,full.story