LUSAKA, April, 2025 –THE future of Zambia’s cannabis industry hangs in the balance as Government drags its feet in actualizing the legal growing and export of the crop for both medical and industrial use.
Despite the country legalising the growing of medicinal cannabis in 2021, four years later, there has been little to zero movement in ensuring that policies and licensees are given to farmers and agribusinesses intending to grow this cash crop.
As a result, donor and investor fatigue has set in resulting in many Zambian companies losing face and reputation before international funders and investors.
For those that had moved equipment into newly bought farms and hired farms, this delay has in many agro companies and farmers suffering great losses and humiliation.
Some have been blacklisted by their funders.
Zambia’s economy, which is largely dependent on agriculture and tourism, could get a serious boost from the actualisation of the cultivation and export of both industrial hemp and medicinal cannabis, said to be worth billions of dollars annually.
Government ministries expected to be in charge of this billion-dollar lucrative sector, seem to be disagreeable as to who among them will be in charge of overseeing and protection of this lucrative cannabis industry.
Both the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture want to be in charge of this industry.
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