One of the poorest countries in Africa wants its Legal Marijuana Send a round the world

Kekeletso Lekaota spends his work feeding rows of cannabis plants for harvest. Trimming a few yellowing leaves with thick, the flowering heads come, he says the work has a soft touch and soft hands requires. It is a harvest Lekaota with no experience was 18 months ago, when he saw an ad for a breeder in their local newspaper. Well, the 27-year-old other trains such as the plants grow MG Health Ltd., a pharmaceutical-grade products Hemp products manufacturer, on a farm and oil extraction plant in Lesotho, the small, mountainous surrounded on United all sides by South Africa. “I do not know what it was cannabis-it was only when I apply for this job, that I realized that dagga,” he said, using a word for Lekaota derived from Khoisan languages ​​local weeds, since they are the greenhouses their request made 12 hours of darkness done. The marijuana was in Lesotho, the poorest, from time immemorial, long used as a medicine by the people indigenous Basotho widely cultivated countries. It ‘s easier to grow and more profitable than other crops such as corn and sugar cane, and the abundant water of the nation and ideal conditions provide fertile ground. Many families rely on the additional income from the illicit recreational drug consumers to sell to cover the basic costs, such as sending their children to school. The Lesotho government is now trying to develop the legal power plantations stimulate the global medical cannabis industry in rapid growth to expand its control current through the export of diamonds dominated, water and wool and create jobs. About two-thirds of the 2.2 million inhabitants of the country live in villages, and many survive on subsistence agriculture. Cannabis is a critical piece of the agricultural strategy of the government that it will help to fund basic infrastructure, such as roads, electricity and hopes aqueducts. In 2018 Lesotho became the first African nation issuing the licenses for the cultivation of cannabis for medical purposes. Foreign investors, including Canadian companies Supreme cannabis Co., Canopy Growth Corp. and Aphria Inc. gave poured tens of millions of dollars in a matter of structures prepared by low production costs. MG Health, the largest commercial producer Lesotho was awarded C $10 million ($7.6 million) of the Supreme cannabis in the last year in exchange for 10% of the company then known as Medi Grow Lesotho (Supreme he said the end of medical hemp oils from Lesotho to Canada wants to export). health plans MG well employ 3,000 workers at the local level-up of about 350 current once it reaches full production in a few years, says CEO André Bothma. The company collects a marijuana strain with low levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) -the connection you get paved in the game rules. Export nonpsychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) enter oil extracts and other medical cannabis products first to South Africa and works in markets in Europe and the Middle East and Australia. “We have first-mover advantage in Africa and we believe that the market is huge,” says Bothma. CBD has a piece of the rapidly growing global cannabis market $340 billion dollars. In the United States alone CBD sales are five times for about six years in 2024 to $20 billion previously expected, according to BDS Analytics. Since the rules of cannabis around to solve the globe, companies are turning to low-cost regions for the supply. MG Health says that even in start-up, produced for about 93 cents per gram in Lesotho, less than $1 or more per gram which cited as the norm elsewhere. But Lesotho will be other regions that face competition for known investments at low cost, including Colombia and Jamaica and other African nations who follow in his footsteps and Legalize production. To obtain large plants with thick heads, breeders have temperatures between 20 and 28 degrees Celsius (68 to 82.4 degrees Fahrenheit), many of the air flow control to prevent mold grow and when they are in full bloom, a strict regime of 12 hours of light and an equal level of darkness second MG Health. As a medical imperative is that the CBD generated oil is standardized and not contaminated and quality control for the MG by the independent health Lucan Laboritories Ltd. Workers pressed performed every day at work and wear layers of clothing to make a shower, which are then washed and the end. The young right-industry in Lesotho has given great ideas for illegal growers, the tribes for their strong psychotropic effects and known for selling products to South Africans. You can avoid arrest by producing in remote locations and corrupt authorities. Kotsoana Clementi, an 43-year-old, the pot grows without permission in his village during a 1.5-hour drive from the capital Maseru, says a Canadian company with cannabis from a transaction partner can. While Clementi is with his blue collar shirt with other villagers, Guess jeans and shiny black shoes, which lacks the transaction in its current small house of stone is rudimentary. After harvesting his weeds from March to May, Clementi fills hundreds of packages, sealing it with the flame of a kerosene lamp, and the rounded end of a spoon. It takes 15 Rand ($1) per piece and can 380 packs a day to sell a value very close to $400 (he says he owns 60% of sales and the rest goes to drug runners and bribes to the border police). “The most important thing that an investor, then it would be safe, would have had the entire village works,” says Clementi. “I would still be for the business, but the villagers could have 2-3% of the units.”
Picture copyright by Guillem Sartorio AFP / Getty Images