World No Tobacco Day 2024: Innovation To Lower Smoking Rates

Every year, on 31 May, we mark World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) to highlight tobacco use’s health and other risks and advocate for effective policies to reduce smoking.

Nowhere else has the number of smokers increased since 1990 than in Africa — 104% in North Africa and the Middle East and almost 75% in sub-Saharan Africa. There were about 66 million smokers on the continent in 2015; by 2025, estimates suggest the number could be 84 million. Africa is one of only two parts of the world, along with the eastern Mediterranean region, where tobacco smoking is predicted to grow in the coming decade.

We must be worried about the future because we are on an upward trajectory. Africa’s improving economy and fast-growing population will mean an increase in the number of smokers and smoking-related deaths if we do not act now!

Should Africa continue to “play catch up”?

Policymakers in Africa should ditch outdated prohibitionist laws and mimic what Sweden did to become the first smoke-free country in Europe. With only 6% of its population smoking, Sweden is set to be the first country in the EU to reach 5%, the level below which a country can claim to be ‘smoke-free’.

As we continue to shape the “Africa we Want” on World No Tobacco Day, we need to learn from countries succeeding in reducing smoking-related deaths. To emulate the success of the UK, New Zealand, and Sweden, which pioneered reducing smoking rates, Africans must prioritise harm reduction strategies, embrace risk-appropriate nicotine regulation, and promote accessible, affordable, and acceptable smoke-free alternatives.

It’s time for African countries to follow suit by adopting an approach that prioritises harm reduction, allows smokers a more viable path to quitting, saves lives, and, more importantly, establishes stop-smoking cessation services to help smokers quit directly through evidence-based approaches.