Dawn breaks in the village of Marakabei, two and a half thousand meters up in the remote highlands of Lesotho, the landlocked kingdom surrounded by South Africa. Cowbells tinkle. Smoke from cooking fires rises above homes along the steep hillsides. An old donkey path winds around the edge of a peak.
And then there are the workers walking it, each wearing overalls in a color denoting their function—blue for construction, green for cultivation. At the end of the path, they press their thumbs to a biometric scanner, pass through a turnstile, and enter a different world.
Here is the first glimpse of one of Lesotho’s biggest commercial cannabis farms. After the biometric scanner comes more than a dozen poly tunnels, each the size of a tennis court, growing medicinal cannabis in an environment controlled for heat, light, and moisture. They are surrounded by fences, guard posts, more turnstiles, more scanners, roads carved out of the hillside, and tractors zipping up and down, ferrying piles of dirt to yet more construction sites.
The farm represents what could be a revolution in the fortunes of one of Africa’s poorest countries, the kingdom of Lesotho. If the kingdom can get it right, that is.
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