Africa, the unfair rules of the global market: Cameroon, Ghana and Ivory Coast, dialogue with the EU for sustainable and fair cocoa

ROME – The African continent is by far the world’s leading producer of cocoa, but collects the crumbs of a billion-dollar market. Just to give an example, a Ghanaian farmer in this sector of the national economy earns 1 dollar a day; one of his counterparts from the Ivory Coast survives on 78 cents. They are rules of global trade that the rich part of the world has no desire to change. Only the Ivory Coast and Ghana alone represent over 60% of world cocoa production and last October the two governments decided to boycott a meeting of the sector in Brussels, precisely in protest against the policies of the food multinationals on prices. An old problem thus re-emerges: that of the rules of world trade which the so-called “advanced Western economies” do not even remotely dream of changing, even if their more balanced rewriting would solve many problems, not least that of poverty, malnutrition, flows migratory.

The accounts of inequality. To cocoa farmers, just to understand how things stand, only 6% of the cost of a chocolate bar goes. Two of the major NGOs in the sector of the two countries, the Plateforme Ivoirienne pour le cacao durable and the Ghana Civil-Society Cocoa Platform, praised the authorities for choosing a boycott. “It is immoral that while the farmers of the North are paid more, who supply sugar and milk, the same is not done with the farmers of the South”, denounced Bakary Traoré, executive director of the NGO Initiatives pour le développement communautaire et la conservation de la forêt (Idef), part of the Ivorian Civil Society Platform. According to the international organization Fairtrade, only 6% of the final cost of a chocolate bar ends up in the pockets of cocoa farmers. This figure has been declining sharply for decades. According to data of World Economic Forum relaunched by the newspaper Financial Timesin Ghana a cocoa producer earns an average of one dollar a day, while in the Ivory Coast 78 cents.

“The Farmers of the Global South? Who Cares”. With this initiative – reads on Africa and Businessthe magazine on the continent of the future, directed by Massimo Zaurrini, which hosts numerous insights on the “cocoa paradox” – African countries are trying to make European public opinion aware of the working conditions of cocoa producers. “When you look at the production of chocolate – says Bakary Traoré, executive director of NGO Idef – you have milk, cocoa, milk and sugar. The price of sugar has gone up, the price of milk has gone up, but the price of cocoa is only going down. And why? Because sugar and milk are produced in the countries of the North and the farmers of the North must be helped. But who cares about those of the South, therefore of the Ivory Coast and Ghana”.

Dialogue with the European Union. Meanwhile – it still reads on Africa and Businessthe fifth edition of the Cocoa talks, the dialogues on sustainable cocoa, a moment of encounter between the European Union, the world’s leading importer of cocoa beans, and the main producing countries, Cameroon, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which discuss various issues related to the cocoa industry . In particular, the fifth edition of the Cocoa talks focuses its attention on the need to eradicate child labour. THE Cocoa talks of Yaoundé also focus on decent incomes for cocoa producers and monitoring sustainability and traceability standards. Cameroon and the other producing countries have made achieving these goals one of their priorities.