Ghana became the fifth country of dispatch of cocaine to Antwerp — MyJoyOnline
Belgian customs named Ghana the fifth country of origin of containers with cocaine seized at the port of Antwerp in Belgium in 2025. According to MyJoyOnline, Ghana was the only African country in the top five. Ecuador, Costa Rica, Brazil and Colombia were also included.
In 2025, nearly 55 tonnes of cocaine were seized in Antwerp, 24% more than the 44 tonnes a year earlier. Belgian Finance Minister Jan Jambon presented these data on January 21, 2026.
What country of origin means
In Belgian customs statistics, the country of origin is considered to be the state where a container was loaded and dispatched, rather than the country where the drugs were produced. The report stresses that cocaine is not grown in Ghana: it is delivered from the Andes and concealed among legitimate Ghanaian exports.
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Ghana's position is linked to major seizures of shipments sent from the port of Tema. At the end of November 2025, Belgian authorities found 2,829 kilograms of cocaine hidden in cassava flour that had arrived from Tema. In December, another shipment from Ghana contained an additional 1,158 kilograms of a substance suspected to be cocaine. Together, these two shipments weighed about four tonnes, or approximately 7% of all cocaine seizures at the port in 2025.
Seizures in France and the Netherlands
In June 2025, Dutch customs seized 4.5 tonnes of cocaine hidden in a timber shipment from Tema at the port of Amsterdam. The seizure was described as the largest in the port's history.
In September 2026, French customs in Dunkirk reported the seizure of nearly 3.9 tonnes of cocaine in a container of plastic waste from Ghana, part of which was bound for Antwerp. After that, Ghanaian President John Mahama instructed an interagency group to review drug detection systems at ports and borders. According to the presidential administration, ten people were held as part of the investigation, including four employees of the customs unit of the Ghana Revenue Authority.
