Eastern Cape Premier Oscar Mbuyane (pictured above) has called on the National Cannabis Master Plan Steering Committee to urgently introduce the regulatory framework required to unlock the province’s cannabis economy. This comes as the first of Medigrow’s millions are due to flow into the province as part of an ambitious five year plan that could transform the economic face of the Eastern Cape.

The Eastern Cape has taken the lead in driving the concept of private/public partnerships in the cannabis sector. While central government has identified such partnerships as a key driver to develop the cannabis industry, particularly in impoverished rural areas, it has dithered in putting in place an enabling framework.

The Eastern Cape has stepped into this gap with an ambitious partnership formed between the provincial government under Premier Mbuyane and cannabis heavyweight Medigrow, which has already established 14 cannabis cultivation facilities in South Africa.

In April this year Medigrow signed a R1 billion investment pledge with the Eastern Cape’s Agriculture Department to develop a cannabis processing hub in the Coega Special Industrial Zone (SEZ) outside Gqeberha that would have a ripple effect on the provincial economy.

The first investment tranche is due to flow into provincial coffers before the end of the year, but it appears that the investment framework is yet to be finalized by Government, which is touting regulatory ‘sandboxes’ as a way of fast-tracking cannabis reform.

“Sandboxes” are zones designed to nurture and incubate industrial projects providing certain exemptions from laws and regulations that apply elsewhere in the country.

Premier Mbuyane has called on the Cannabis Master Plan steering committee to fast-track the fast-track measures to enable the investment, and finalize a  ‘sandbox’ for the Eastern Cape. He says Medigrow’s commitment “represents the biggest investment in this subsector in the province and we hope it will act as a catalyst to those investors (locally and internationally) who have identified the province as a strategic location for cannabis investment.”

Mabuyane, an avid supporter of cannabis production as a stimulant for industrial and economic growth in the province (which has an unemployment rate of 41%), has often expressed his discontent with slow progress from national government.

He says one of the problems is that  in creating conducive commercial cannabis legislation, private consumption among adults is legal but a “huge amount of red tape remains around its sale.”

Back in April at the investment launched he was already appealing to Government to expedite the ‘sandbox regulatory interim reform’.

“We are concerned by the slow progress of the country’s policymakers in expediting the full implementation… of an enabling cannabis regulation framework that encompasses the commercial exploitation of whole plant, all purposes legislation” he said.

The investment pledge agreement’s goal is to cultivate 10,000 hectares of cannabis over the next five years, creating some 30,000 job opportunities (at three workers per hectare).

Medigrow says from its side its ready to roll. CEO Edgar Adams says: “As per the agreement, a sum of R246 million will be invested by the end of 2024 to finalise an extraction and manufacturing facility for growing indoor cannabis, extracting CBD, producing hemp cigarettes, and packaging the products.”

Medigrow’s business plan envisages Coega as a major processing hub outsourcing the  growing of hemp for oil and isolate to thousands of rural growers and thereby financially incentivizing them to integrate into the economic mainstream.

Adams said that small-scale farmers will be supplied with seeds to grow the hemp plant, and that the production process would begin once the building becomes compliant and the necessary equipment is installed.

At the April launch, Premier Mabuyane paid tribute to the province’s cannabis growers, who he noted, had suffered hardship in keeping their cannabis culture alive.

“The province’s indigenous cannabis growers and knowledge holders (have) withstood harassment, the destruction and spraying of their cannabis crops with dangerous chemicals, arrests, criminalisation, and even death to protect this wonder plant/crop owned by Africans from being obliterated,” said Mabuyane.