Special Report: II Smoking in Africa

Source: VOANews.com (Voice of America)
Date: 2009-11-30
Author: Robert Daguillard

In the first part of a VOA series on smoking in Africa, Robert
Daguillard looks at who is smoking and what opponents and
representatives of the tobacco industry are saying about it.

By all accounts, the experiences of people like Samuel Wargbo, a
young Liberian receptionist, are more common these days in
sub-Saharan Africa.

"In the interior, even in the Monrovia area where we live, where
we live, you see people passing with cigarettes between their
fingers, smoking, even in cars and all," says Wargbo. "I
experienced it before: the bus that we\'re in, the driver was
smoking! People have to tell him to stop!"

Although it is hard to gather statistics for the continent as a
whole, anecdotal evidence, such as that provided by Samuel,
suggests tobacco smoking is slowly gaining increasing in Africa.
Samuel says more and more youth are smoking and adds that the
rate of tobacco use among males and females is about the same.

For its part, the World Health Organization is reporting an
increase of about four percent a year in tobacco consumption in
Africa. . . .

Tobacco and smoking are present in sub-Saharan Africa in ways
that are as diverse as the continent itself. Tobacco is produced
on small farms in remote areas of Ethiopia, or in large factories
owned by multinational corporations in Nigeria or Tanzania.
Smokers comply with strong anti-tobacco regulations in countries
like South Africa or "light up," so to speak, in the
near-lawlessness of Mogadishu, Somalia\'s capital. People can buy
packets in Kenya, or individual cigarettes in Senegal. And while
the number of smokers is increasing across the continent,
countries like Zimbabwe, which once considered tobacco the
backbone of its agricultural economy, export much of their
production to China and other overseas destinations.
. . .
Keith Gretton, Africa-Middle East director for London-based
British American Tobacco company, says worldwide markets are
stable and rejects the accusation by anti-smoking activists that
his and other tobacco companies are simply preying on the
countries south of the Sahara. . . .

Gustave Tombola is a researcher at the free university of Kigali.
He says one way companies get around restrictions on tobacco
advertising, is by donating supplies to schools or granting
scholarships to students