Cannabis academy in SA affirms Wajackoyah's prescient vision of economic revival

**Roots Party leader George Wajackoyah.** [David Gichuru, Standard]

A cannabis academy has opened somewhere in Johannesburg, South Africa, where students are taught how to take good care of cannabis plants.

Smoking is not allowed, although the programme seeks to destigmatise cannabis cultivation and consumption.

An amorphous court ruling in 2018 in South Africa allowed possession of modest quantities of bangi for personal use, usually for medicinal purposes, although those who want to do use it for recreation could invoke medicinal use as well.

Commercial cultivation of bangi, however, is seen as the next big thing in revamping South Africa’s economy and creating much-needed jobs.

This is why the bangi academy is keen to produce well-skilled workers to prune and water and weed the plants to service the burgeoning economy. Which calls to mind former presidential candidate George Wajackoyah’s push for cannabis growing as the next big cash crop out of Kenya.

I think Wajackoyah’s prescient vision of the future has been clarified by the SA academy. At a time the shilling is getting battered by international currencies, our bangi exports would have steadied the economic ship.

Perhaps it’s time we tried Wajackoyah’s other flagship project, which was to export hyena testicles to China as an aphrodisiac. I have no idea how hyenas would be encouraged to reproduce exponentially for organ harvesting, but I’m certain the good professor would have an idea or two of how to go about it. After all, nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to reconsider bangi cultivation, now that the flower sector isn’t blooming, and our fertile, volcanic soils should be incubating something.