As Chocolate Prices Soar Do Ghana’s Cocoa Farmers Prosper?

Early 2024 saw global cocoa and chocolate prices more than doubling over 2023. Several interrelated factors seemingly drove the increases including inflation in the cost of inputs including sugar and cocoa and increased global demand for chocolate especially in Europe and Asia. Crop disease and climate change negatively impacted production in the two largest producing nations of Cote D’Ivoire and Ghana. Some experts predicted that global warming may make it impossible to grow cocoa in West Africa by 2050. Further, the structure of the cocoa markets in these nations differed leading Ghana’s farmers to smuggle some 100,000 tons of cocoa to neighboring Cote D’Ivoire. For Ghana’s impoverished cocoa farmers, the question was simple: “Will the lot of cocoa farmers ever improve?”