The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Although the academic, media and the legal communities have considered the tobacco industry's complicity in cigarette smuggling in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia, similar activities across Africa remains under-reported. Accordingly, we present an overview of cigarette smuggling throughout Africa as evidenced from the tobacco industry's documents.

Methods: We have undertaken several years of document research, using virtually all of the available online and hard-copy document collections, to compile hundreds of documents detailing how the cigarette manufacturers planned and executed smuggling operations in Africa. These documents suggest that such activities were carried out for the tobacco companies in dozens of African countries across the entirety of the continent.

Results: The tobacco manufacturers' cigarette smuggling in Africa is multifaceted and complex. Their operations are organised on a regional basis, with different middlemen running the day-to-day operations in various parts of the continent. Documents show, however, that senior company management oversaw these activities by controlling the broad policy decisions on smuggling including the operation of small legal sales with the stated purpose of providing cover for the larger, much more profitable contraband sales.

Nevertheless, cigarette smuggling in Africa is not their prime objective. Rather, smuggling is one (albeit important) manner of achieving their underlying goal: controlling the market environment irrespective of whatever regulatory controls governments might seek to impose. By putting market control in their own hands, using all means necessary, the manufacturers can better maximize their return on investment. Smuggling is simply one avenue that has proven useful in that endeavour.