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South Africa will seek to harness a multibillion-dollar dagga and hemp industry in a bid to create as many 130 000 jobs and lure foreign investment as it grapples with record unemployment.
Africa’s most industrialised nation plans to streamline the "regulatory processes so that the hemp and cannabis sector can thrive like it is in other countries such as Lesotho", President Cyril Ramaphosa said in his State of the Nation Address in Cape Town on Thursday.
Dagga has grown increasingly popular as a recreational drug and a medication, while its staid sister hemp is used in clothing, concrete blocks and even car parts. The global medical cannabis market was worth $7.8 billion (~R117.5 billion) in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 15.3% through 2026, according to research firm IMARC Group.
Ramaphosa’s announcement comes almost six months after the agriculture department unveiled a national strategy for the industrialisation and commercialisation of the cannabis plant, which estimated the size of the local industry at R28 billion. It envisaged encouraging the cultivation of hemp and marijuana and increasing the volumes and variety produced for local and export markets within an effective regulatory system.
