Paper short abstract:

Guinea-Bissau is often called Africa's first narco-state, being the most important transit point for Latin American drugs on their way to Europe. Is this title well-deserved and why? And what consequences it can have on local, national and international level?

Paper long abstract:

For a long time the phenomenon of narcobusiness was treated as a local problem - limited to the country of drugs origin, but recent years have brought a change in this matter. The unidirectional model, in which narcobusiness is treated as a pathology of the country of origin, has been replaced by the multidirectional model which emphasizes the interaction between a country of origin and a country of destination, as well as the consequences of drug trade for the international environment. Caught in the middle of this interaction are the countries like Guinea-Bissau, transit points for drug traffickers. Being one of the poorest countries in the world, Guinea-Bissau is considered to be the most important transit point for drugs being sent to Europe by Latin American, mostly Colombian, cartels. As a result, Guinea-Bissau is often called "a collapsed narco-state" or "Africa's first narco-state", leading among other countries of Lusophone Africa on the rankings of dysfunctional states, such as Failed States Index, prepared by US-based think tank, The Fund for Peace.

The paper will be divided into two parts. The first will be an attempt to search for the causes of Guinea-Bissau's state dysfunctionality in a matter of narcobusiness: are these only geographical circumstances (especially Bijagos islands) or rather susceptibility to corruption and lack of efficiently functioning authority? The second part will focus on the consequences of this growing drug trade on national, regional and international/global level, such as an increasing number of drug addicts among Bissau-Guinean society or a security threat to other West African states.