Drugs, Globalization & the Free Market in Kenya

Oftentimes the world's most innovative businesspeople live on the margins of the law. Slate today (mostly) lauds what it calls "the most efficient agricultural industry" in the world. Kenya's miraa growers, sellers and shippers (the drug is known elsewhere as qat or khat) are a truly ingenious bunch. For those who, like me, find a free trade in legalized drugs to be one of the greatest prospects for rapid third-world development, this article is a treat. (Minus its hopefully ironic reference to opponents of regulation as "cynics".)

Miraa is certainly a striking example of business ingenuity rising to meet formidable challenges. The chemicals that give chewers their high start breaking down as soon as the twigs are picked, so time is of the essence. Somehow, an industry with no coordinating body, whose players are mainly small farmers or modest middlemen, manages to get tens of thousands of neatly packed kibundas (bundles) of fresh miraa loaded onto the "miraa jets"—the Toyota pickups that line Maua's main drag; down the long, potholed road to Nairobi's Wilson Airport; crammed aboard the notoriously overloaded flights; and onto the coffee tables of expectant chewers in foreign capitals in under two days. "This is a business which has always operated informally, in which accounts are kept on the back of cigarette packets, yet it's the most efficient agricultural industry on the planet," says Paul Goldsmith, a Meru-based development expert. "The commodity has a 48-hour shelf life, but it goes all over the world."

Goldsmith, who believes international hostility to miraa is based on ignorance and myth rather than common sense, fears miraa may not be allowed to enjoy its freedom much longer. Local politicians concerned about the nagging issue of legitimacy are already talking about pressing the Kenyan government to officially recognise miraa as a cash crop. Certainly, in a country whose grasping political elite has always shown a talent for latching onto profit-making ventures and sucking them dry, the lack of regulation surrounding the trade seems an anomaly or an oversight. And, of course, should miraa escape Kenya's bureaucratically minded legislators, another, possibly far greater, danger looms ahead: [a] dreaded U.N. report [on miraa].

The Slate piece is here. I made a similar case a couple years back at A World Connected.