info.afrindex.com
China-Africa Trade Information Service
info.afrindex.com
China-Africa Trade Information Service
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Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Togo are the main cocoa producers in West Africa. These West African countries together account for 70% of world cocoa production, while Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana accounting for around 60%.
Yet many countries across the continent are still overly reliant on the raw export of cocoa at the expense of the value creation seen in Côte d'Ivoire. Most of the output in the region is exported unprocessed, mainly to the European Union and North America, destroying local value.
Côte d'Ivoire's nine-year-long Programme Quantité-Qualité-Croissance is hoping to improve cocoa production so that by 2023, 800,000 hectares of cocoa, including 150,000 hectares damaged by disease, are replanted. In 2012, the government introduced a fertiliser initiative for cocoa farmers and hopes to reach 200,000 farmers by 2020.
The Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) implemented rehabilitation and replanting as well as programmes to fix roads in cocoa-growing communities, tackle pests and diseases, improve marketing facilities, and to provide quality inputs like seeds, fertilisers and chemicals.
In 2011, Nigeria introduced its four-year Cocoa Transformation Action Plan (CTAP) to increase cocoa production by 40% to reach 500,000 tonnes by 2015 and process at least 25% of national output.
Although these schemes improved the quality of production and yields, a sharp supply glut and subsequent fall in global prices from 2017 shows the danger of boosting production without pursuing value addition.
Between September 2016 and February 2017, the Cocoa Barometer for 2018 reported that the global market price declined steeply, with a tonne of cocoa reducing dramatically from above $3,000 to less than $1,900.
Smallholder cocoa farmers were the worst hit. As the Conseil du Café-Cacao (Coffee-Cocoa Council or CCC) slashed farm gate prices by 36% in April 2017, an estimated 6m smallholders who relied on cocoa as their major source of income grappled with the downturn.
As a result of the glut, policymakers have called for a renewed focus on value creation and warehousing.
Industry experts say West Africa’s main cocoa producers should invest in cocoa processing facilities to cut down on the cost of local processing and increase domestic consumption.
