On 15 March 2026 The Botswana Gazette quoted three African industry bodies against the country's first licensed hemp producer. All three trace back to the same man in London. One of them corresponds to a company dissolved fifteen months earlier. Of twelve organisations in the same cluster, seven have zero members, and four fifths of the five that remain are the same person.
This investigation is based on public registers and the organisations' own published statements. Svenskhampa is owned and published by Daniel Johansson personally. He also owns Helsama OÜ, a reseller of products from Hemp Innovations, the company the article below was directed against. Helsama is therefore commercially affected by the journalism examined here. See Ownership and transparency.
What the newspaper wrote
The article is titled "Botswana's First Licensed Cannabis Producer Warned" (archived copy of 16 March 2026). It was published under the byline Admin, while the text itself is signed Gazette Reporter.
It reports that Hemp Innovations Botswana has been granted the country's first licence for both medical cannabis and industrial hemp, and sets that news against criticism from what the paper describes as African industry bodies.
The first to be quoted is African Hemp Consortium:
"As this sector expands across the continent, licence allocations must prioritise substantive local ownership, governance control and long-term value retention within African economies."
"Africa's emerging natural capital industries cannot afford to replicate externally controlled extraction models under the banner of compliance or first-mover positioning."
The second is African Medicinal Cannabis Council, which according to the paper "later joined the discussion":
"Botswana's land and natural capital must generate durable value for the people of Botswana, not function primarily as upstream supply for externally controlled processing and capital structures."
The council further warned, the paper writes, that safeguards against regulatory capture and excessive foreign influence would become necessary as the industry develops.
The third is Cannabis Research UK:
"Meanwhile, UK-based Cannabis Research UK echoed similar concerns, citing research showing that projects primarily structured for export markets often fail to deliver meaningful economic benefits locally."
Three organisations, in sequence, all saying the same thing about the same company in the same article. The paper presents them as mutually independent voices in a continental debate.
The three are the same man
Sembu Kemoh Gbla states on his own public LinkedIn profile that he has been chief executive of Cannabis Research UK since January 2020.
On the same profile, under Organizations, he states that he is Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at The African Cannabis Committee (AfCC) since May 2023, the page that today displays as African Medicinal Cannabis Council.
That it is the same page is visible in the URL. LinkedIn keeps the original address when a page is renamed, and the address of African Medicinal Cannabis Council still reads `the-african-cannabis-committee-home`. The rename is visible only there.
The third body, African Hemp Consortium, has published on its own page a partnership with The Carbon Standard, an organisation where Gbla states he is Standards Engineer. This is the weakest of the three links, and it should be read as what it is: a self-declared relationship between two pages, not a corporate one.
How many people actually work there
The Carbon Standard states on its LinkedIn page that it has between 11 and 50 employees and is based in The Hague. The number of members who list the organisation as their employer on LinkedIn is one. It is Gbla.
The number of associated members is not set by the page owner. It is the sum of the LinkedIn accounts that have themselves listed the organisation as their employer. The same check across twelve organisations in the cluster gives the following.
| Organisation | States employees | Actual members |
|---|---|---|
| African Medicinal Cannabis Council | 11–50 | 0 |
| African Hemp Consortium | 51–200 | 0 |
| African Cannabis Quality & Standards Commission | 11–50 | 0 |
| Medicinal Cannabis Africa | 2–10 | 0 |
| Cannabis Africa Brief | 2–10 | 0 |
| African Cannabis Trade Journal | 2–10 | 0 |
| The African Cannabis Business Times | 2–10 | 0 |
| The Carbon Standard | 11–50 | 1 (Gbla) |
| Cannabis Research UK | 2–10 | 1 (Gbla) |
| European Black Minority Cannabis Association | 11–50 | 1 (Gbla) |
| Cannabis Business Equity Europe | 11–50 | 1 (Gbla) |
| Pan-African Cannabis Commission | 51–200 | 1 (another person) |
A combined stated headcount in the order of 170 to 700 people. Five actual members, four of whom are the same man.
Two of the three bodies quoted in the article, African Medicinal Cannabis Council and African Hemp Consortium, have zero. The third, Cannabis Research UK, has one, and it is Gbla.
Four of the twelve are moreover publications, in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Kigali and Lagos. They republish each other. None of them has a single employee.
One last detail belongs to the picture. The Carbon Standard, which issues the standards the rest of the cluster invokes as independent authority, has a registered domain. It does not accept email. Svenskhampa wrote to the organisation at three addresses on its own domain on 1 August 2026, and all three were rejected by the receiving server.
The company that was dissolved
To this comes a fact that can be tested against a register rather than against a profile.
Cannabis Research UK corresponds in the United Kingdom to the company CANNABIS RESEARCH AND EDUCATION (UK) LTD, registration number 12340288. The company was dissolved on 24 December 2024.
It had therefore been dissolved for fifteen months when the newspaper quoted it as a British research authority. Gbla still states the role in the present tense on his profile.
None of the twelve organisations is registered as a company or a charity in the United Kingdom, although two of them state a London address.
Six weeks
The timings can be checked against the pages' own posts. LinkedIn embeds the publication time in each post's address, and it cannot be altered afterwards by whoever posted it.
The founding documents the organisations invoke, charters, frameworks, standards, were published during a five-week period immediately before the article. Two of the organisations state 2022 as their founding year and published their founding charters in February 2026.
On 20 January 2026 three of them published their first posts within seven minutes: European Black Minority Cannabis Association at 13:56:45, Cannabis Business Equity Europe at 13:58:45, and Pan-African Cannabis Commission at 14:03:54. Gbla is, by his own account, an officer in two of the three.
One of the bodies, Pan-African Cannabis Commission, states that it is "the first AU-wide multilateral organization". The African Union's own list of specialised agencies and institutions contains no cannabis body of any kind.
Eleven days after the Gazette article, on 26 March, African Medicinal Cannabis Council published a post at 07:01:51. Five minutes later the organisation commented on its own post. At 07:10:22 came a comment from Medicinal Cannabis Africa, and at 11:07:50 one from African Cannabis Quality & Standards Commission. Both open with the same formula: "A clear and important perspective", "A timely and well-articulated perspective".
What is not established: that Gbla personally authored any of the statements reproduced in the Gazette article. That the organisations are his follows from his own account of his roles. Who wrote and submitted the text to the newspaper, Svenskhampa does not know.
What the company answered
Hemp Holding AB was given space in the article and defended the arrangement:
"Good day, we have strong local partners and government bodies as partners and local shareholders in the company."
"All employees will be local apart from a few external experts or consultants bringing knowledge to the nation."
The company specified later in the same article that it intends to supply both international and domestic markets.
Fifteen days later
On 30 March 2026 Sunday Standard, Botswana's other major newspaper, published two articles on the same day about the same company: "Botswana's hemp mystery: Who's really cashing in?" and "Controversy erupts over Botswana's first licensed cannabis producer".
The byline on both is Sunday Standard Reporter.
Neither of Botswana's two newspapers, then, put a journalist's name on the material. The Gazette wrote Admin, Sunday Standard wrote Sunday Standard Reporter.
Most of the text sits behind a paywall. From the open part it is clear that the articles proceed from the company's own communications and from a check of Botswana's company register.
The company that was not in the register
The register check appears in the lede of "Botswana's hemp mystery", openly and outside the paywall:
"The Swedish company Hemp Holding AB has attracted local and international mixed reactions as the green gold investor. Behind the headlines, the company's name doesn't exist in Botswana's official records."
The statement is correct and means nothing. Hemp Holding AB is a Swedish limited company and is registered in Sweden. That a Swedish company name is absent from Botswana's company register follows from the company being Swedish. It is not a finding.
The company that holds the licence is a different one. Hemp Innovations Botswana (Pty) Ltd is registered in Botswana with registration number BW00009409078 at Plot 54370, Gaborone.
The name of that company was in the newspaper's own material. In the second article, published the same day under the same byline, it is reproduced:
"On its LinkedIn page, Hemp Holding AB, a Sweden-based company, declared that its local vehicle, Hemp Innovations Botswana, had 'officially acquired the first license to cultivate both medical cannabis and industrial hemp in Botswana.'"
The local company's name was therefore in the paper's own text on the same day. The search that was reported concerned the parent company.
A search that takes one minute
This investigation does not allege that any newsroom acted in bad faith.
What can be established is simpler. That Cannabis Research UK's company was dissolved is free, public and takes one minute to retrieve from the British company register. How many people actually work in the organisations quoted sits on the organisations' own pages, one tab away from the text that was quoted. The rename is visible in the address bar of the page a journalist has to open anyway to find the quote. The name of the company that actually holds the licence was in the newspaper's own article the same day, under the same byline.
None of the checks was made, or if they were made they led to nothing visible in the published text.
Right of reply
Sembu Kemoh Gbla has been put all of the above: his roles, the renaming of the page, the organisations' member counts, the dissolved company, the timings and the African Union claim. He has also been asked whether he or anyone representing him submitted the statements to the newspaper, whether the standards have been attested by any independent body, whether he controls the page that carries another company's name, and whether he has any commercial interest in Botswana's hemp sector.
A first attempt to reach him on 1 August 2026, at three addresses on The Carbon Standard's own domain, was rejected by the receiving server. He was then reached via LinkedIn, where the matters were put to him on 3 August 2026. The deadline, set at 10 August 2026, has expired without a reply. A reply will be received and published after the date of publication.
The Botswana Gazette was put on 1 August 2026 to questions about who submitted the statements and from what address, what checks were made of the three bodies' existence, who is behind the byline Admin, whether any payment was offered in connection with publication, and whether the paper intends to correct the article. The deadline has expired without a reply.
Sunday Standard was put the same questions before the Gazette was, and the deadline has expired without a reply.
Sources
- The Botswana Gazette, "Botswana's First Licensed Cannabis Producer Warned", 15 March 2026: thegazette.news · archived copy of 16 March 2026
- Sunday Standard, "Botswana's hemp mystery: Who's really cashing in?", 30 March 2026: sundaystandard.info
- Sunday Standard, "Controversy erupts over Botswana's first licensed cannabis producer", 30 March 2026: sundaystandard.info
- Companies and Intellectual Property Authority (CIPA), Botswana: Hemp Innovations Botswana (Pty) Ltd, reg BW00009409078, Plot 54370, Gaborone
- Companies House, CANNABIS RESEARCH AND EDUCATION (UK) LTD, reg 12340288: find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk
- The African Union's list of specialised agencies and institutions: au.int
Screenshots of every organisation page, with the address bar and timestamp in frame, together with decoded timestamps for each post cited above, are held in the editorial archive.