As 2026 begins, a quiet shift is taking place across Africa. Adult smokers are changing how they consume nicotine, but policy has yet to catch up.

From Nairobi to Johannesburg and from Lagos to Accra, smoke-free nicotine alternatives, particularly oral nicotine products and vapes, are increasingly visible in informal markets, online spaces, and cross-border trade. This transition is not driven by advertising campaigns or industry pressure. It is largely consumer-led, shaped by rising cigarette prices, expanding smoke-free environments, and growing awareness of the health risks of smoking.

Yet while consumer behavior evolves, tobacco control policy across much of Africa remains anchored in a cigarette-only framework.

Laws Designed for a Different Time

Most African tobacco laws were drafted more than a decade ago, when cigarettes dominated nicotine consumption and non-combustible alternatives barely featured in policy discussions. The regulatory focus was clear: reduce smoking prevalence through advertising bans, public-use restrictions, and excise taxes.

In 2026, those same laws are being stretched to cover products they were never designed to regulate.

Oral nicotine products are often classified as tobacco by default, treated identically to cigarettes, or left in legal grey zones. In some countries, they are effectively prohibited; not due to clear evidence of harm, but because legislation offers no category for them at all.

This regulatory lag is no longer a technical issue. It is shaping markets, enforcement challenges, and public health outcomes across the continent.

Consumers Are Moving Ahead of Regulation

Despite legal uncertainty, adult consumers are already transitioning. Oral nicotine products are discreet, smoke-free, and compatible with increasingly strict public smoking rules. For many users, they represent a practical adaptation rather than a political statement.

However, because regulation has not evolved, this shift is happening largely outside formal systems.

Products enter markets without standardized labelling, ingredient disclosure, or quality controls. Governments collect little data, enforce no consistent age-of-sale rules, and gain no tax revenue from products that are already widely used. Oversight is lost not because regulation is weak, but because it is absent.

The result is a growing disconnect between how nicotine is consumed in practice and how it is governed in law.

Why This Matters in Numbers

The stakes are not abstract. Tobacco use remains one of the leading preventable causes of death in Africa, contributing to hundreds of thousands of deaths annually and placing long-term strain on already stretched health systems. At the same time, the illicit tobacco trade is estimated to account for between 15 and 25 percent of cigarette consumption in several African markets, depriving governments of significant tax revenue and undermining enforcement efforts. Where new nicotine products are banned or left unregulated, similar patterns are already emerging: informal supply chains, zero product standards, and no age controls. For policymakers, this represents a familiar and costly policy failure, repeating itself in a new category.

Other regions have faced similar challenges and made different choices. In parts of Europe, regulators recognized that non-combustible nicotine products required distinct regulatory treatment. Rather than blanket bans, they introduced product standards, age restrictions, marketing controls, and differentiated tax approaches. 

The aim was not deregulation, but proportionality, regulating products according to risk while maintaining oversight. Africa does not need to replicate these models wholesale. But ignoring the principle of risk differentiation entirely risks repeating mistakes that others have already documented.

Youth use is often cited as the primary justification for restricting or banning oral nicotine products. Protecting young people is a legitimate policy priority. However, conflating adult harm reduction with youth prevention undermines both objectives.

Experience shows that youth protection is strongest where markets are regulated, not driven underground. Age verification, retail licensing, penalties for non-compliance, and restrictions on youth-oriented marketing all depend on legal recognition of the market.

In 2026, the debate is no longer about whether oral nicotine products will reach African consumers. They already have. The real policy question is whether these products will exist within regulatory frameworks or outside them.