Drug traffickers using Ghana as a transit point are getting more sophisticated in their means of transporting cocaine and other narcotics.

The country's infamous growth as a major transit point for drugs on their way to Europe hit international headlines earlier this month when two British teenagers were nabbed for allegedly carrying two laptop bags packed with six kilos of cocaine.

But it is the arrest of another woman allegedly carrying cocaine through the airport that same night that has drug enforcement officials more concerned.

Drug enforcement officials at the Kotoko International Airport arrested the Romanian woman the same night as the British teens. She was allegedly carrying 10 kilos of cocaine. But what's unique about the case is how she was carrying the drugs.

“It was actually moulded into the shape of the suitcase, it actually was the suitcase, with the frame around that and then a cover. This is a big difference to what we've seen here previously,” Gary Nichols an official of the British High Commission in Accra who oversees Operation Westbridge, said.

Operation Westbridge is a joint anti-trafficking campaign between Britain and Ghana.

Nichols says while the British teenagers got the media attention when the story broke of their arrest, it was actually the sophistication of the other case that was more worrying.

“The only people we know of who have the expertise and skills to do this are the Columbian and Venezuelan cartels. That could be quite a worrying development. It could point to a change to the way in which the drug cartel is operating here and that they have a warehouse factory producing similar suitcases.

He said that instance was only the second time officials had seen that sort of sophisticated mode of concealment in all of Africa and for him, it more than suggested that drug traffickers were honing ways to get their product undetected through Ghana and into markets in Europe and beyond.

At the offices of the Narcotics Control Board in Accra, Landy Teye pulls three parcels of cannabis hidden in the false back of a decorative wood carving. As head of research, Teye has watched traffickers improve their techniques.

“They are growing by the day with their sophistication. They are always ahead, because once you discover this mode of concealment they try to do something else,” he says.


Since November last year, more than 60 parcels of drugs have been seized at the airport totaling 200 kilos of cocaine and 1,000 kilos of cannabis. But Gary Nichols says that's a fraction of what traffickers are moving through the country.

There have been several high profile failures to intercept large shipments of cocaine, including an estimated two tonnes landed by a ship called the MV Jano earlier this year. Nichols says police complicity is part of the problem.

“To land two tonnes of cocaine I would say it is very difficult to do without the complicity of law enforcement agencies. It's a considerable amount.”

But Landy Teye with the Narcotics Control Board said the story of official complicity has been overstated.

“I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, or people are angels. But for me, most of these stories are coming from the camp of people that commit the crimes.”

He says the authorities need to focus on rooting out the bad apples, so the good ones can do their jobs.

For now, moving drugs through the airport is getting harder and harder. But so far Gary Nichols says it's only the hired carriers who are being caught and want action to uncover the people who are sending them.