Zimbabwe encourages residents to produce medical cannabis

The Zimbabwean government is keen to create a medical cannabis industry on its soil. A few months after authorized three types of license to grow the plant, the government has just relaxed standards to encourage investors. From now on, a Zimbabwean cannabiculturist will be able to own 100 % of his farm, whereas the executive had planned to take a stake in each one. Another decision: a grower will be able to choose any part of the territory, from the banks of the Zambezi River to the Limpopo, the two natural borders of this southern African country.

These decisions are part of a «investor-friendly government policy to attract capital and be competitive».», says the head of Zimbabwe's development agency, contacted by Bloomberg. The country's goal is to sell $1.25 billion worth of cannabis this year. A (very) ambitious goal for many economists. Even if the industry's growth rate is estimated at 15 % per year, between 2021 and 2026.

To encourage this, the executive wants to protect cannabis growers from expropriation. A real trauma for Zimbabweans. In 2000, the government of dictator Robert Mugabe expropriated 4,500 white farmers from their land. At the time, these descendants of British colonists owned two-thirds of the country's farms. Twenty years on, Zimbabwe has no intention of acknowledging this episode with its cannabis fields.

Twenty years of severe economic crisis

To encourage investors, the government is also relaxing the rules around currency. For example, farmers will be allowed to keep the profits from cannabis sales in dollars for two to four years. Up until now, the government has had a stranglehold on the US greenback. In this country, hyperinflation is a scourge. Prices have risen by 300 % in 2019, and the Zimbabwean dollar is now worth almost nothing.

Cannabis thus appears to be a «savior». Especially since Zimbabwe has a wealth of agricultural expertise. Until the 1990s, it was nicknamed «the cereal granary of southern Africa». It is also the world's sixth-largest tobacco producer, with revenues of $444 million in 2020.

But it will have to watch out for its neighbors. Indeed, southern Africa is made up of several countries that have authorized cannabis, to varying degrees. Its neighbors South Africa, Zambia, Malawi and Lesotho have authorized medical cannabis. South Africa, Africa's second-largest economy, granted its first licenses in 2019. Small Lesotho, a landlocked territory in South Africa the size of Brittany, is the first African country authorized to export cannabis to European patients.