The economy of Guinea-Bissau comprises a mixture of state-owned and private companies. Guinea-Bissau is among the world's least developed nations and one of the 10 poorest countries in the world, and depends mainly on agriculture and fishing. Cashew crops have increased remarkably in recent years, and the country ranked ninth in cashew production for the year of 2019.
The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean from Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian is in the gulf.
The illegal drug trade or drug trafficking is a global black market dedicated to the cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of prohibited drugs. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs through the use of drug prohibition laws. The think tank Global Financial Integrity's Transnational Crime and the Developing World report estimates the size of the global illicit drug market between US$426 and US$652 billion in 2014 alone. With a world GDP of US$78 trillion in the same year, the illegal drug trade may be estimated as nearly 1% of total global trade. Consumption of illegal drugs is widespread globally and it remains very difficult for local authorities to thwart its popularity.
Narco-state is a political and economic term applied to countries where all legitimate institutions become penetrated by the power and wealth of the illegal drug trade. The term was first used to describe Bolivia following the 1980 coup of Luis García Meza which was seen to be primarily financed with the help of narcotics traffickers. Other well-known examples are Colombia, Honduras, Guinea-Bissau, Afghanistan, Mexico, Myanmar and Syria, where drug cartels produce, ship and sell drugs such as captagon, cocaine and marijuana.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is a United Nations office that was established in 1997 as the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention by combining the United Nations International Drug Control Program (UNDCP) and the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Division in the United Nations Office at Vienna. and was renamed the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in 2002.
Organized crime in Nigeria includes activities by fraudsters, bandits in Northern Nigeria, drug traffickers and racketeers, which have spread across Western Africa. Nigerian criminal gangs rose to prominence in the 1980s, owing much to the globalization of the world's economies and the high level of lawlessness and corruption in the country.
This article deals with activities of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency related to transnational crime, including the illicit drug trade.
Crime in Iran is present in various forms, and may include the following offences: murder, kidnapping, theft, fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking, drug selling, alcohol smuggling, oil smuggling, tax evasion and many other ordinary crimes that criminals commit.
Kosovo within communist Yugoslavia had the lowest rate of crime in the whole country. Following the Kosovo War (1999), the region had become a significant center of organized crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking and organ theft. There is also an ongoing ethnic conflict between Kosovar Albanians and Kosovan Serbs. The large Kosovar diaspora which had built up in Western Europe during the 1990s, combined with the political instability, created ideal conditions for Kosovo to become "Europe's crime hub"; well into the 2000s, Kosovo remained associated with both ethnic conflict and organized crime. A Kosovo Police service has been built up under UN administration, beginning in 1999. It had an operational force of 7,000 officers in 2004, and further expanded to 9,000 by 2010. The deplorable crime rate led to an additional deployment of civilian law enforcement resources of the European Union to Kosovo, under the name of European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo in 2008. Originally scheduled for two years, the duration of the deployment was extended twice, as of September 2012 scheduled to last until 2014.
Crime in Nigeria is investigated by the Nigerian Police. Nigeria is considered to be a country with a high level of crime, ranking 17th among the least peaceful countries in the world.
Slovakia is a Central European country with a history of relatively low crime. While crime became more widespread after the Revolutions of 1989, it remains low when compared to many other post-communist countries.
Corruption in Guinea-Bissau is among the highest levels in the world. In Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2014, it was ranked 161st out of 175 countries. The previous year, it was at 163rd out of 177 countries. This marked a decline from its 2012 ranking, 150th out of 174 countries. In 2013, Guinea-Bissau scored below the averages for both Africa and West Africa on the Mo Ibrahim Foundation’s Index of African Governance.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the drug trade in West Africa rapidly expanded amid dramatic increases in US and European demand for cocaine, cannabis, and other drugs. This resulted in the expansion of two distinct trade routes, both of which went through West Africa. One route exported domestically produced cannabis from West Africa to South Africa, Europe, and Asia. The other trade route moved cocaine from Latin America and heroin from Afghanistan and Southeast Asia to Europe and the United States. In both of these routes, drug traffickers took advantage of trading networks created by Malian and Berber traders in colonial times to move drugs through the region, as well as West Africa's broader geographical location as an intermediate stop from Latin America and Southwest Asia to Europe and the United States. This was due in part to West Africa's badly policed borders, endemic corruption, and economic inequalities.
Oil theft in Nigeria is considered to be the illegal appropriation of crude or refined oil products from the pipelines of multinational oil companies. Oil theft in Nigeria is facilitated by the pragmatic co-operation between security forces, militia organizations, the local population, and oil company employees who use a variety of methods to steal oil from the multinational oil corporations that are stationed within the country. Currently, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Statoil, Shell, and Agip are the five largest multinational oil companies present in Nigeria. Due to the lack of federal oversight and a large network of corruption, oil theft is primarily cellular rather than hierarchical and requires frequent collaboration between a variety of random players depending on the level of oil theft being committed. Each group maintains a specific role in the oil theft trade in Nigeria. These key players use methods such as hot-tapping and cold-tapping to perform oil bunkering and steal thousands of barrels of oil per day from established oil pipelines. In addition to stealing oil from the pipelines, oil theft can also occur during the transportation of the crude oil product to the oil shipping terminals for export. Oil thefting often is the only way for individuals to survive in Nigeria.
East African drug trade refers to the sale and trafficking of illegal drugs that take place in East African countries like Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, and Ethiopia. The most prevalent types of drugs traded in East Africa are heroin, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, and khat, all of which are strictly prohibited in East African countries.
Maritime drug smuggling into Australia refers to the smuggling of illicit drugs into Australia by sea. While much contemporary Australian media coverage has focused on smaller, more personalised smuggling cases such as the Bali Nine, maritime drug smuggling often allows criminal groups to move illicit drugs and substances into Australia at a much greater scale. This has happened through a variety of ways, including via cargo ship, yacht, and fishing vessels. Key departure locations for drugs aimed to be smuggled into Australia include China, India, Southeast Asia, and the Americas, with much of the drugs trafficked via countries and territories in the South Pacific, in close proximity to Australia.
Maritime cocaine smuggling refers to the practice which involves the smuggling of cocaine between borders via maritime means. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), there are an estimated 18 million users of cocaine globally. Approximately 70-80% of cocaine is at some point smuggled across the ocean, originating from South America. Cocaine remains the "highest value criminal commodity for transnational organised crime", motivating the criminal organisations responsible for maritime smuggling practices. Maritime cocaine smuggling is therefore an ongoing international issue, as criminal organisations are finding new and innovative ways of smuggling cocaine and go undetected by authorities.
Drug smuggling is an issue that is gaining international attention, particularly in the Indian Ocean region. The Indian Ocean borders 24 states, and accounts for a third of the world’s ocean area. Previously, other challenges, such as Somali piracy, have been at the forefront of international action. However, the utilisation of the Southern route by drug traffickers, and the consequent issues this has caused, has led to increased focus on how to tackle this issue.
As a practice of piracy, petro-piracy, also sometimes called oil piracy or petrol piracy, is defined as “illegal taking of oil after vessel hijacks, which are sometimes executed with the use of motorships” with huge potential financial rewards. Petro-piracy is mostly a practice that is connected to and originates from piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, but examples of petro-piracy outside of the Gulf of Guinea is not uncommon. At least since 2008, the Gulf of Guinea has been home to pirates practicing petro-piracy by targeting the region's extensive oil industry. Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has risen in the last years to become the hot spot of piracy globally with 76 actual and attempted attacks, according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB). Most of these attacks in the Gulf of Guinea take place in inland or territorial waters, but recently pirates have been proven to venture further out to sea, e.g. crew members were kidnapped from the tanker David B. 220 nautical miles outside of Benin. Pirates most often targets vessels carrying oil products and kidnappings of crew for ransom. IMB reports that countries in the Gulf of Guinea, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Togo, Congo, and, especially, Nigeria, have experienced petro-piracy and kidnappings of crew as the most common trends of piracy attacks in the Gulf of Guinea.
Seychelles is a small island nation with a vast maritime territory, consisting of 115 islands and a 137 million square kilometer Exclusive Economic Zone. The prevalence of drugs in the country is high and the country is experiencing a heroin epidemic, with an equivalent to 10% of the working force using heroin in 2019. Due to its location along a major trafficking route, drugs can easily be trafficked by sea to Seychelles.
Guinea will join later. In some nations in the area, which are amongst the poorest in the world, drug trafficking profits actually outweigh the GDP. The Initiative will cover law enforcement, intelligence gathering, border management and corruption, among other crime prevention elements. 
