I have had what I might call a lifetime interest in the versatility of the cannabis plant. My first encounter with cannabis (mbanje) came when I was a child growing up in rural north-western Zimbabwe’s Hurungwe District. Ever since, I have gone from my earliest memories of this versatile plant as a potent traditional medicine to later in life where I encountered the same plant as a classified illegal drug. When I first left Zimbabwe as university student travelling across the world, I once again encountered cannabis as both an illegal and legal substance largely used as a recreational psychoactive and hallucinogenic drug. Later on, as a professional, I encountered cannabis in my work as an archaeologist researching and studying traces found in artefacts such as ceramic pot sherds and ethnographic collections of smoking paraphernalia across southern Africa. In the past decade, I have seen the same plant once again re-emerging in the public debate with another identity. This time global societies that have largely campaigned against cannabis are now on the forefront of the cannabis research completely reversing their historical attachments to psychoactive and hallucinogenic applications.

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Keywords

cannabis economy, mirage, entrepreneurial opportunity, Africa