How Africa News
Senegal’s customs authority says it seized 798kg of cocaine hidden inside new cars on a ship traveling from Brazil.
The cocaine was discovered overnight Sunday inside 15 cars on a ship that anchored at the port in Senegal’s capital, Dakar.
This follows the seizure last Wednesday of 238kg of cocaine smuggled from Brazil in a similar manner.
Seizures like these in West Africa are on the rise this year with several unusually large quantities intercepted.
In January, 9.5 tonnes of cocaine was seized in Cape Verde, making it the region’s largest-ever drug bust and another 789kg stashed away in a fish truck seized in Guinea Bissau two months later.
Drug smugglers tend to use West Africa as a transshipment point for cocaine while on route from South America to Europe.
Statistics from the U.N Office on Drugs and Crime showed that 3.4 tonnes of cocaine were seized in Africa in 2017, back up to 2013 levels after falling to 1.2 tonnes in 2015, although the data likely underestimates the extent of drug trafficking on the continent.
Senegal’s largest seizure came in 2007, when authorities seized almost 25 tonnes of cocaine worth more than 300 million
