Breakthrough could create thousands of jobs for locals and help import the medical cannabis production industry into Africa
One of country’s most interesting cannabis producers, ‘WeGROW Lesotho’, has recently announced it’s in the final stages of constructing the biggest (17,000 sqm) and most modern (powered by Israeli Agro Tech innovation) cultivation center in Lesotho according to strict EU’s good manufacturing practice standards (GMP), which will allow the company to cultivate and export medical grade cannabis flowers, oil’s and extracts as an active pharmaceutical ingredient to European markets.
Breakthrough could create thousands of jobs for locals and help import the medical cannabis production industry into Africa
The GMP guidelines are the strictest requirements a manufacturer or producer must meet to ensure products are safe and of a consistent high quality. The GMP standards are used to control the licensing for sale of pharmaceutical and medical products and constitute an important threshold requirement for the sale of quality medical cannabis products in Europe.
The company is optimistic accreditation will open doors to business with more EU countries and other international markets. As it has already received inquiries from France, the UK and Australia.
A report in August last year forecast the European cannabis market will be worth $2.4B by 2027.
Located 1,600m above sea level in the mountain region just outside the capital Maseru, the medical cannabis company in Lesotho currently employs over 100 people on its 17,000 sqm production facility. But it has plans to increase its workforce to over 5,00 by 2025, “which is almost the entire population of the agro-community”, said Ms. Nitsan Nadel, the company’s regional manager.
WeGROW’s chief executive officer, Mr. Tal Arbeli, said: “We are sitting in a beautiful rural area where there is hardly any modern industry, and we are growing organically pure cannabidiol products that will impact millions of medical patients all across Europe by the end of this year and will bring the international high quality standards of medical cannabis at affordable prices to the global cannabis ecosystem.”
The tiny mountain kingdom was the first in Africa to license the growing of medicinal cannabis in 2017. The crop is widely produced in the country, although cannabis possession and use is illegal domestically, the company will export its first batch to Germany later this year.