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Prof. Chris Duvall’s research on cannabis in Africa has been highlighted in the cannabis trade publication CannaVision. In the article Neocolonial Aspects of Cannabis Legalization in Africa, Prof. Duvall discusses the power differences that exist between now-legal cannabis businesses in the Global North and regular people in African countries. In several countries, especially in Southern and Central Africa, governments have licensed cannabis farming, processing, and exports for companies based mostly in Europe and Canada, even though the African governments maintain anti-cannabis laws for their citizens. The Global Northern companies are able to pay large fees to receive licenses from African governments, fees that are far beyond the means of most Africans and often not made public anyway. In many parts of Africa, cannabis has very long histories of use that were mostly outlawed during the colonial period, and maintained after the continent’s independence movements of the 1950s-1990s. Prof. Duvall argues that now is the time to reduce and prevent international economic inequities, given the newness of the emerging global cannabis market. Prof. Duvall’s academic research on the subject has been published in the journals Space and Polity and EchoGéo, and in the books The African Roots of Marijuana and Cannabis.
