Latin American drug cartels are now active in at least 12 European countries, and possibly as many as 16, according to a four-month investigation by the Guardian. The message for Zambia is simple: when the big drug economies shift, Africa's trade routes and ports become the new battleground, and we cannot afford to let foreign criminal networks, or foreign agencies claiming to fight them, dictate terms on our soil.
The investigation, built on police databases, intelligence files and interviews with judges, prosecutors and experts from eight countries, found that cartels and gangs from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and the US have forged close ties with European mafia organisations. Between 2014 and 2024, cocaine seizures in Europe rose by 471%, and more local laboratories processing cocaine derivatives were dismantled than ever before.
Which criminal groups are operating in Europe?
The groups officially identified include Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel (CJNG), Colombia's Clan del Golfo and guerrilla organisations including the ELN and dissident factions of Farc, Brazil's Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and Comando Vermelho, Venezuela's Tren de Aragua, and the US-originated Barrio 18 and MS-13 gangs.
These organisations have built their strongest presence in Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, with activity also recorded in Germany, Romania, Croatia and Slovakia. The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (Gi-Toc) adds Bulgaria to that list.
Daniel Brombacher, director of the Europe Observatory at Gi-Toc, said the phenomenon is no longer limited to traditional gateway countries. Recent police operations uncovered Mexican-run methamphetamine labs in southern France, north-eastern Poland and Brandenburg, south of Berlin.
Why the true number could be 16 countries or more
An unpublished report by the São Paulo public prosecutor's office, partly based on data from Brazilian intelligence agency Abin, shows that the PCC, now Brazil's biggest criminal group, operates in 16 European countries, including the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.
Mexican academic Víctor Manuel Sánchez Valdés of the Autonomous University of Coahuila believes the Sinaloa cartel and CJNG have a presence in more than 20 European countries, not as dominant armies but as business emissaries.
What this means for Zambia and Africa
Here is what should concern every Zambian. Latin American drug production has roughly quadrupled over the past decade, reaching a record of about 4,100 tonnes in 2024, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's 2026 World Drug Report. Coca cultivation covered a record 385,000 hectares, three times the 2014 figure. Europe has become the prized market because profit margins are higher than in the US, and European police now confiscate more drugs than their American counterparts.
When one market saturates, the networks look elsewhere. Our region has already seen trafficking routes pushed through southern and eastern Africa. Zambia sits on corridors that connect the region's ports to its hinterland. If foreign criminal networks ever try to plant themselves here, it must be Zambian institutions, our own police, our own courts, answerable to our own people, that respond. Not imported agendas, and not outsiders using the drug fight as cover to meddle in how we run our country.
Europol's latest report counts 731 of what it calls the most threatening criminal networks operating across Europe, with 149 connected to Latin American organisations. Interpol, led by Brazilian federal police officer Valdecy Urquiza, was approached for comment but did not respond.
Is this a new problem?
No. Colombian organisations such as the Cali and Medellín cartels had footholds in regions of Spain like Galicia as far back as the 1980s, and a Europol report warned of their rise in 2013. What authorities are witnessing now, however, is on another level entirely.
How big is global cocaine production now?
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime says global cocaine production in 2024 was between 3,800 and 4,700 tonnes, more than four times the 2014 level. More cocaine is now produced in Colombia than during the era of the notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar.
Zambia must watch this trend closely, guard its borders with its own eyes, and put Zambian interests first. Our sovereignty is not for sale, and neither are our routes.