The price of chocolate bars has shot up across the world over the past year, meaning they can feel like a luxury – yet West Africa’s cocoa farmers have not been reaping the benefit. In fact, many are in a desperate state as they have not been paid for months.
“My husband fell sick, and I couldn’t get money to take him to the hospital. So he died at home,” 52-year-old Ghanaian cocoa farmer Akosua Frimpong told the BBC.
Following a surge in the cost of cocoa – the main ingredient of chocolate – in 2024, prices have since crashed.
Much of the world’s cocoa is produced in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, where state regulators set the price a year in advance. The recent price collapse has made their beans around 40% more expensive than international traders are willing to pay.
Prices have fallen for a variety of reasons, partly because a good harvest worldwide came at a time of lower demand. Because of the previous high prices, chocolate bars have become smaller, and chocolate makers have been using less cocoa.
The knock-on effect should mean that chocolate bars will eventually be less expensive, but it has left the cocoa industry in Ghana and the Ivory Coast in a mess.
Even when prices were high, West Africa’s cocoa farmers felt they were not benefiting from the world’s chocoholics.
Their farms are in remote areas deep in the jungle, with poor infrastructure; they live in villages with little access to electricity or running water.
The bright sunshine could not dissipate the heavy atmosphere of grief that loomed over the village of Suhenso in western Ghana when we visited last month.
Mourners squeezed into Frimpong’s home to pay their respects to her husband, Malik Boahen, who had died earlier in February after his neck began to swell up.
She did not have the money to get proper medical care for him – something she blames on the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod), which licenses companies to buy the country’s crop for international sale at a set price.
As those companies have not been able to sell the cocoa this year, the farmers have been left out of pocket. Cocobod has stepped in to buy much of it to save the industry from collapse, but many farmers say they haven’t been paid.
“The money I was anticipating from my cocoa bean sales is currently inaccessible. I’m a widow now, and I don’t have anyone to support me,” said Frimpong.
The payment delay is thought to be affecting some 800,000 cocoa farmers – and it has had a knock-on effect on hundreds of thousands of rural livelihoods.
Last October, Cocobod set the amount to be paid to farmers at nearly $5,300 (£3,900) per tonne, but the price on the global market has fallen to well below this level.
The shortfall has added to the board’s debt, which now amounts to some $3bn.
In response to the financial difficulties, Cocobod officials took a pay cut in February: 20% for executive management and 10% for senior staff.
The board’s spokesperson, Jerome Sam, acknowledged that while there had been delays in farmers getting their money, payments were now being processed.
Cocoa accounts for about 7% of Ghana’s GDP, or national income, and the beans’ exports account for around 15% of the country’s foreign exchange earnings.
As a result, the health of the sector has a direct effect on the wealth of the country, and to help revamp it, the government has announced a raft of measures, including plans to process more of the crop in Ghana itself, rather than have the raw bean converted into chocolate and other products outside the country.
In order to resolve the current debt issue, Cocobod has now dramatically reduced the price it guarantees farmers to $3,500 a tonne, even though this is still above current prices.
Robert Addae, who has been farming the cash crop for 14 years, says this is not enough.
“The prices of farm inputs and implements remain the same, the cost of labour has not reduced, so the cut in cocoa prices will adversely affect us,” the 62-year-old farmer told the BBC.
On average, it costs around $1,000 to maintain an acre of cocoa farm in Ghana, and many farmers are concerned they might not be able to recoup their investment.
Nana Obodie Boateng Bonsu, president of the Concerned Cocoa Farmers Association, recognises that Cocobod faces challenges but suggests their pay cuts should go towards paying farmers.
“If they were reducing their salaries to add up to our cocoa prices, that would have been brilliant,” he told the BBC.
Neighbouring Ivory Coast, the world’s leading cocoa producer, has been hit by similar problems.
Sacks of beans have piled up in warehouses in the town of Bangolo in the west of the country as cocoa co-operatives struggle to sell to exporters.
The country’s equivalent of Cocobod – the Coffee and Cocoa Council – also guaranteed a price last year that is now way above the international price.
On Wednesday, Agriculture Minister Bruno Kone announced that the price paid to farmers would be cut in half in order to try and boost sales.
Before that announcement, Bahily Bakouli Issiaca, a member of the Bangolo cocoa co-operative, was concerned as he inspected hundreds of cocoa beans in his warehouse.
“More than 800 cocoa farmers give their beans to us to sell, but this year it has been very difficult to sell them,” he told the BBC.
“Lorries full of cocoa sacks have been parked here for almost 21 days now.”
The Coffee and Cocoa Council sets the price in the Ivory Coast and licenses a number of co-operatives and companies to export the dried beans.
“I harvested my cocoa and sent it to the village, but there’s no buyer. I don’t know how I’ll feed my 10 children or support their education,” Sella Aga Josiane told the BBC as she tended to her trees on a plot outside Bangolo.
The 38-year-old added that some of her children were sent home from school the week before because she could not pay their school fees.
“This crisis is tough for me.”
Ivory Coast was expected to have about 200,000 tonnes of cocoa awaiting buyers by the end of March if the current situation had persisted.
Ba Siba Fabrice, another cocoa farmer near Bangolo, said it was the worst situation he had experienced since he started farming cocoa as a teenager in 2012.
The 35-year-old feels the weight of responsibility as those he supports feel he has failed them.
“Today, there is no peace between my family and me because there is no more money. When there is no money in a household, there is no peace,” he said.
“We live through cocoa.”
