The War For Chocolate

How Ghana & The Ivory Coast's fight with the west for cocoa can change the face of African commerce forever

When talking about self sufficiency and autonomy, it’s important to see how the actions of the present are connected to the past. The African continent has been pillaged for centuries and it’s a testimony to the abundance of riches we have that we have managed to sustain the entire world for such an extended period of time. However, with such riches, the levels of exploitation we’ve experienced has been staggering.

There was a time when we received nothing for our resources other than the perceived ‘benefit’ of being cared for by colonial masters. After independence the machinations of colonisation simply morphed into other forms of control rather than putting an end to the siphoning of resources out of Africa. This is why the cocoa war that is currently being waged is so important to the continent.

Ghana and The Ivory Coast are engaged in this war with the west  and it is one of the most important fights in the history of African commerce. It is no surprise that the mainstream media isn’t talking about it. It’s important you know exactly what’s going on and how this war for cocoa could set a precedent for trade negotiations across all of Africa.

The world calls Africa third world, poor and under developed but for centuries Africa has supplied the world with both human and natural resources. Colonialism to build western empires, slavery to build western economies, oil to power your cars and machines, rubber for your products, diamonds for your necklaces and cobalt for your phones and computer chips. Africa provides too much to mention so why is it the poorest continent in the world but the richest in resources? This story gets dark but that is a conversation for another time.

Cocoa is the basic and most important raw material of chocolate and is a 100 - 150 billion dollar a year industry. Yes BILLION with a B! While Ghana and the Ivory Coast are two of the major producers of Cocoa in the world they get just 6 percent of that 100 billion with the majority of the profit going to western multinational corporations. This is the kind of business that keeps Africa poor while making the west richer. Some of the biggest chocolate corporations include Lindt, Cadbury’s Ferrero, Mars, Nestlé and Hershey’s.

Ghana and the Ivory Coast boycotted the World Cocoa Foundation meeting in Brussels, in Belgium in protest of these unfair trading practices. In Africa we ship our resources to the west without producing much of our own. As a Nigerian how are we a major oil producer yet have fuel and diesel shortage every other day?

The west then makes products with our resources and then sells those products to us at inflated prices that they set with an exchange rate to their advantage. Exchange rates is another area I will be focusing on in future. When I was young I could buy a crate of sprite for 24 Naira in Lagos. I don’t think 24 Naira will buy me one drop of Sprite today.

So the west makes profit TWICE; with the purchase and resell of the raw materials and then the sale of the product, made with those raw materials, back to us. It’s a perfect hustle. So what did Ghana and the Ivory Coast do? They did something fantastic.

Ghana started producing its own chocolate to compete with the big boys in chocolate manufacturing. Now they were no longer beholden to the machinations of the western corporations and could set prices to their liking and reap a greater share of the profits. This kind of self sufficiency is how Africa will rise and in that vein, here are seven Ghanaian chocolate brands you should look out for.

While this initiative is great for Africa, this won’t be easy for Ghana and the Ivory Coast. Here are the obstacles to victory. Cocobod, the Ghana cocoa authority, uses Cocoa as collateral for cheap loans from the US. There’s actually a Ghana Free Zone in Ghana that rewards cocoa producers who export at least 70% of their produce abroad. They are incentivised not to keep their cocoa in Ghana because Ghanaian cocoa is a major part of how they stabilise the exchange rate. This is a classic leverage tactic of the west on African natural resources. In addition to this, Ghanaian children are suing one of the top European chocolate companies for child labour and unsafe working conditions as they are forced to do the work due to the extreme low wages paid to cocoa farmers while these companies make billions.

Africa staying poor is no accident, it is by design. As Africans we must think of short term struggle for long term gain. Power is never given. It’s taken. Ghana and the Ivory Coast wins, Africa wins and it will change the fate of the entire continent.