Ghana was the fifth-largest country of origin for cocaine seized at Belgium’s Port of Antwerp in 2025, according to figures from Belgian customs. It was the only African country among the top five, with the other four being Latin American producer and transit countries. Belgian customs seized nearly 55 tonnes of cocaine at Antwerp last year, representing a 24 percent increase from the 44 tonnes confiscated in 2024. Belgium’s Finance Minister, Jan Jambon, released the figures on January 21, 2026.
According to a breakdown reported by Belgian public broadcaster VRT, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Brazil and Colombia ranked ahead of Ghana. VRT described Ghana as “de vreemde eend in de bijt,” or “the odd one out.” Antwerp serves as a major entry point for cocaine into Europe, while Belgian customs identify Belgium as the continent’s most important destination for cocaine transported by sea.
However, in customs terminology, “country of origin” refers to the country where a container was loaded and shipped, rather than where the cocaine was produced. The cocaine seized from shipments linked to Ghana was not produced in the country. Instead, the drugs originate from the Andes and are concealed within legitimate Ghanaian exports before being shipped to Europe.
Ghana’s position on the 2025 list appears to have been driven by a series of major seizures involving cargo from Tema. In late November 2025, Belgian authorities discovered 2,829 kilogrammes of cocaine hidden in a shipment of cassava flour from Tema. A month later, another 1,158 kilogrammes of suspected cocaine were intercepted in a shipment from Ghana. The two seizures amounted to nearly four tonnes, accounting for roughly seven percent of all cocaine seized at the port during 2025.
Ghana’s appearance among the leading countries is a new development. A major 2022 analysis of Europe’s cocaine market by the European Union’s drugs agency and Europol identified Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Benin, Sierra Leone and The Gambia among West African countries associated with large cocaine seizures, but Ghana was not included in the list.
The Belgian figures are part of a wider pattern of seizures abroad traced to Ghanaian ports. In June 2025, Dutch customs seized 4,500 kilogrammes of cocaine hidden in a timber shipment from Tema at the port of Amsterdam, the largest seizure in the port’s history. In June 2026, Australian authorities announced the seizure of 320 kilogrammes of methamphetamine concealed in charcoal shipped from Ghana, valued at A$296 million. In September 2026, French customs at Dunkirk found nearly 3.9 tonnes of cocaine in a container of plastic waste from Ghana, part of it bound for Antwerp. French authorities valued that seizure at €225 million, about US$261 million.
A JoyNews tally counts 28 narcotics-related cases linked to Ghana since January 2025, 11 of them involving cocaine. The cocaine cases with published weights, at home and abroad, add up to about 15.8 tonnes. The four cases that came with official valuations total about US$768 million. The largest local seizure was 3.3 tonnes of cocaine intercepted at Pedu Junction in Cape Coast in March 2025, valued at more than US$350 million.
The Dunkirk seizure prompted President John Mahama to convene a meeting of security chiefs on 17 September. He directed an inter-agency task force to review Ghana’s systems for detecting narcotics and to submit, within two weeks, a roadmap for stopping drugs from moving through the country’s ports and borders. That deadline falls this week. The Presidency said ten people, including four officers of the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, were being held while investigations continued.
All ten have since been put before the courts. Six, including a freight forwarder, the owner of the container and the four customs officers, were arraigned at the Kwabenya Circuit Court. Four others were arraigned at the Accra High Court and remanded until 13 October. They face charges including conspiracy to export narcotic drugs and exporting narcotics without a licence. The alleged mastermind, the Dutch fugitive Jos Leijdekkers, known as “Bolle Jos”, remains at large. According to the prosecution’s facts as reported, abnormalities were detected in the scanned images of the containers before export, but the containers were not subjected to further examination.
The Interior Minister, Muntaka Mubarak, said in August that intelligence-led operations had led to 217 arrests and 165 prosecutions over 20 months. Over the same period, authorities seized more than 8,500 kilogrammes of narcotics and 45.4 million tramadol tablets.
The matter reached Parliament on Tuesday, but the House declined to investigate it. Parliament had been recalled from recess at the request of the Minority, which then moved a motion for a bipartisan ad hoc committee to inquire into the seizures. The motion was filed by the First Deputy Minority Whip, Habib Iddrisu. It asked the committee to examine how the consignments were processed and cleared, which companies were involved, the state of investigations and prosecutions, port security, and the roles of state agencies.
The Speaker, Alban Bagbin, ruled the motion inadmissible under Standing Orders 5, 6 and 103(f). He said four substantive narcotics cases involving about 21 people are pending before the courts, and that the proposed inquiry overlapped with them. “The combined effects of undertaking this evaluation, assessment and investigation would be, at the end of the day, to determine the very issues that the court of competent jurisdiction is supposed to determine,” he said.
The Minority insists that the issues it wishes to investigate are not currently before any court. The Minority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, stated that the committee should have focused on areas such as container scanning, customs controls, port access, intelligence sharing, and coordination between agencies, rather than on the guilt of any accused individual. “The motion we filed before the House does not seek to try any accused person. It does not ask Parliament to determine criminal liability,” he explained.
He noted that the Speaker “made an error by using existing pending criminal proceedings to define the scope and manner of the inquiry.” Afenyo-Markin described this situation as “a sad day for democracy and parliamentary oversight,” adding that the Minority would not let the matter be overlooked.
The concerns are not limited to the opposition. On September 17, the day of the President’s meeting, the Interior Minister warned that Ghana’s foreign partners were becoming reluctant to share intelligence due to concerns about potential insiders within the security services. “Our counterparts abroad are now beginning to doubt whether they can provide us with certain information because they suspect it may be leaked by an insider,” he said. “The very person who has been trained and trusted with that responsibility is now trading with it.” He specifically named France and Australia as partners that are hesitant.
The Narcotics Control Commission (NACOC) has also acknowledged a shift in the drug trade landscape. Its Director-General, Maxwell Obuba Mantey, noted in May that Ghana is no longer just a transit point but is also experiencing an increase in local consumption. In July, he stated that the country is becoming a distribution hub for drugs.
He indicated that drug-related arrests had risen by 197 percent in 2025. NACOC officers have cautioned that trafficking networks exploit fishermen to retrieve drugs from vessels on the high seas and bring them ashore. Following the arrest of suspects linked to the Dunkirk shipment, the Commission emphasised that Ghana must not become a safe haven, transit point, or operational base for international drug trafficking organizations.
