Ivory Coast accounts for more than 40 percent of world
output, and Ghana at least 20 percent. More than half of their growers live
below the poverty line.
The two West Africa producers joined forces in 2019 to try
to get more from the chocolate industry, obtaining a premium per tonne of
cocoa.
But the coronavirus pandemic has hit global demand, and
buyers are reluctant to see prices rise with a surplus in supplies.
Ghana's Foreign Affairs Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchway
said they had agreed to form a joint body to cooperate over research, price
setting, and child labour.
"The two countries which produce about 60 percent of
the world’s cocoa have coordinated on some of those issues before, but this new
organization marks a formal step toward even more effective corporation,"
she said.
The world's chocolate market is estimated to be worth more
than $100 billion, concentrated in a few multinational corporations.
Experts in Ivory Coast say that cocoa prices are still low,
even with the so-called living income differential or LID supplement the two
countries negotiated with chocolate makers to help farmers.
More than half of the million people working in the sector
live below the poverty line, earning less than $1.2 per day according to the
World Bank.
"The cost of even producing a bag of cocoa, is so much
for us," Nana Kwabena PonKoh, a cocoa farmer said at the event.
"This kind of initiative is going to help all farmers
of both countries."
AFP
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