Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world’s two largest cocoa producers have lifted the ban on the sale of cocoa effective July 16. Earlier, both West African countries announced a suspension of cocoa sale in mid June. The decision to this effect was signed by Yves Kone-Brahima, Executive Director of the Coffee-Cocoa Council of Ivory Coast, and Joseph Boahen Aidoo, Executive Head of the Ghana Cocoa Board. Both countries resorted to this game plan to raise prices, with the aim of obtaining better remuneration for farmers. World Bank report says that cocoa farmers in Ivory Coast and Ghana, continue to languish in poverty, with less than $1.2 per day.
Ivory Coast, is the the world’s largest cocoa producer. Yet, it earns just a droplet of the crop’s potential since it does not add value to the products and most of the cocoa beasn are exported in raw form. Significantly, Cocoa is a major crop and accounts for 40 percent of its exports. The country only earns about eight percent of total profits in the cocoa-chocolate sector and the rest cornered by middlemen and other players in the chain. Climate change is also taking a toll in Ivory Coast. The land is becoming parched and less fertile. A third of the existing cocoa plants are getting old and vulnerable to disease.
In 2018, Ivory Coast and neighboring Ghana – which together have a production of 65 percent of global production – created a joint sales mechanism and fixed a minimum price of $2,600 dollars a tonne to benefit farmers who only received a total of six billion dollars from a global market worth about $100 billion.
