Cannabis in East Africa: export yes, recreational use no

Where the region ends depends on who draws the map. The United Nations geographic classification puts about twenty countries and territories in its "Eastern Africa" region: the members of the East African Community and the Horn of Africa, plus Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Madagascar and the Indian Ocean islands. Réunion and Mayotte are among them, and French law applies there in full.

This overview uses that broad definition. It covers the countries that changed their law and the three large ones that did not.

Zimbabwe legalised the production of cannabis for medical and scientific use in 2018 with regulation SI 62 of 2018. Its medicines agency, MCAZ, states in its February 2025 FAQ that medical production is for export only for the time being. The same document distinguishes industrial hemp, defined in Zimbabwe as containing less than 1% THC, from medical cannabis above that level.

Malawi came next, in 2020. On 28 February 2020 Parliament passed a law covering the cultivation, processing, import, export and use of medical cannabis and industrial hemp. According to an article in the Malawi Medical Journal, the text keeps marijuana illegal, treats industrial hemp and medical cannabis separately, and creates a regulator to issue licences.

Zambia passed twin laws in May 2021: the Cannabis Act, No. 33 of 2021, signed on 19 May 2021, and an Industrial Hemp Act, No. 34 of 2021. The Cannabis Act limits the cultivation, manufacture, import and export of cannabis to medical, scientific or research purposes, under licence from the Zambian medicines regulator.

On 12 October 2020, Rwanda's Cabinet approved guidelines on "high value therapeutic crops", its term for medical cannabis. The legal framework is Ministerial Order No. 3 of 2021, published in the Official Gazette on 28 June 2021. It covers the cultivation, processing, distribution and use of cannabis for medical and research purposes, with five-year renewable licences and export permits. Medical use needs a prescription from a specialist doctor. In March 2024 the New Times reported that KKOG, the first company to do so, had obtained an export licence. We found no public record of an actual first export.

Uganda went through an episode that is often misread. On 5 May 2023 the Constitutional Court struck down the 2015 narcotics act, because Parliament had lacked a quorum when passing it. Several media outlets concluded that cannabis was now legal. In a press release of 9 May 2023, the Ugandan judiciary denied it: the restrictions of the older drugs law still applied.

Parliament then passed a new narcotics act, known as the 2023 Act, which became law in February 2024. Growing a prohibited plant now needs a licence from the health minister. Without one, the penalty is up to 5 years in prison, and up to life for a repeat offence. Export licences come from the national drug authority. The Daily Monitor newspaper reports that a private farm received a first cultivation and export licence in July 2025.

Kenya applies the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Act of 1994, which replaced a 1933 law. A bill to regulate cannabis, tabled in 2018, never reached a vote. The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) has followed this Kenyan debate on decriminalisation, which left the law unchanged.

Tanzania has the strictest rules in the region. Its 2015 drug control and enforcement act lists cannabis among prohibited plants, and growing them carries at least 30 years in prison. In April 2024 the minister in charge told Parliament that the question should not be rushed.

Ethiopia punishes personal use of narcotics, cannabis included, under article 525 of its Criminal Code. According to the Ministry of Justice, the penalty can reach 7 years in prison and a 50,000 birr fine.

Every one of these laws operates within the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, whose Schedule I lists cannabis and cannabis resin. On 2 December 2020 the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs took cannabis out of Schedule IV, the list of substances with particularly dangerous properties, by 27 votes to 25 with one abstention. Cannabis remains in Schedule I, so its non-medical use is still prohibited under the conventions. The vote made medical schemes easier to set up and opened no recreational market.

Directly, nothing changes. The French framework is still the order of 30 December 2021: only hemp varieties listed in the official catalogues and containing no more than 0.30% Δ⁹-THC are authorised, and the same limit applies to the products that contain them. The schemes in Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe produce THC-rich medical cannabis for regulated markets, which a private individual cannot import.

A parcel received from these countries falls under French customs rules, described in our article on CBD and customs. For other regions, see our overview of Central Africa, the case of Morocco and its legal sector, and our summary of the three legal models worldwide.