Mali Delegation Draws on Burkina Faso’s Tobacco Tracing Experience

In April, Burkina Faso’s Ministry of Industry and Trade welcomed a delegation of public and private sector officials from its West African neighbour Mali, who were seeking to draw inspiration from Burkina Faso’s experience in tobacco product traceability.

The system used in Burkina Faso is a direct fiscal marking and traceability programme based on the Codentify marking system, which was originally developed and patented by Philip Morris International and subsequently sold to a third party called INEXTO and rebranded as INEXTO Suite.

Burkina Faso has set up a monitoring committee to oversee the system, comprising eight members from the ministries in charge of trade and finance. The Malian delegation, in addition to holding discussions with these members and other involved parties, made field visits to observe the system in action.

Another country in the region to have implemented a similar system to Burkina Faso is the Ivory Coast. Both countries, together with Mali, are members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), which also comprises Togo, Benin, Niger, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau.

Out of these eight WAEMU members, all except Guinea-Bissau are party to the WHO FCTC Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products, which obliges them to implement secure track and trace on cigarettes by 2023, with a strict minimum of involvement by the tobacco industry.

While Togo has introduced an independent tobacco production monitoring, secure fiscal marking and traceability system, provided by SICPA, and while Benin is reported to be firmly opposed to implementing the INEXTO system, we have learnt from an African media report that the Niger Minister of Finance was recently paid a visit by INEXTO to present its solutions.

So time will tell if the remaining WAEMU countries will follow in the footsteps of Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso by implementing the INEXTO system, or whether they will opt instead for a system such as the one in Togo that is deemed fully independent from the tobacco industry.

The concern, therefore, with the INEXTO system – as voiced by the former head of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) as well as the African anti-tobacco association ACONTA – is that it does not guarantee the control of illicit tobacco, since it was originally developed by the tobacco industry itself and is therefore deemed to be self-regulating.

This concern is heightened when placed against a backdrop of extensive cigarette smuggling in West Africa, allegedly involving some of the big tobacco companies.

According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), billions of cigarettes are smuggled north through Mali every year on their way to the grey markets of the Sahel and northern Africa.

The profits of these activities fuel the bloody struggle between jihadists, armed militia, and corrupt military officers, which has turned northern Mali into a lawless warzone.

It is hard to determine exactly how many illicit cigarettes are smuggled through Mali, said the OCCRP, but trade data, information from customs officials, leaked documents, and industry experts indicate there may be up to 4.7 billion surplus cigarettes in Mali every year.

The OCCRP report quoted Hana Ross, a University of Cape Town economist and member of the university’s Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products, who referred to this region as the playground of the tobacco industry.