Cocoa from Ghana

Cocoa has been grown in Ghana since the mid 19th Century. Cocoa was first exported at the end of the 19th century, and between 1911 - 1976 Ghana was the world's leading producer, contributing between 30-40% of the world' s total output. There are currently around 1.6 million people involved in growing cocoa and many more in associated industries.

Ghana and Cocoa

Due to the importance of cocoa in Ghana, both in terms of its effect over the lives of these cocoa farmers and to the Ghanaian economy, the government of the 1930s took over control of the industry. They set up a buying monopoly for all the cocoa produced in Ghana. This body, first under colonial control, and then the independent Ghanaian government, was intended to protect the farmers from price fluctuations. Whilst it failed to really ensure a better price to the farmers, they did receive additional help from the other bodies set up by the government body (now known as Cocobod) such as a Research Institute, subsidised inputs such as fertilisers and a Quality Control Division. It is these services that, in part, have preserved Ghana's reputation for high quality cocoa.

In the late 1970s the world market price for cocoa plummeted by two thirds. Ghanaian cocoa farmers were getting less than 40% of the world market price from Cocobod and so many stopped producing cocoa altogether. The situation worsened after the droughts and accompanying bush fires of the early 1980s and production in Ghana fell from a third of the world's total in 1972 to just 12% of total world production. At this stage the World Bank and International Monetary Fund intervened with a Structural Adjustment Programme to "rescue" the economy. Although this programme has had quite a negative effect on the lives of the farmers, through the increase in the cost of living and farming inputs, it did include a partial reform of the internal cocoa market. The liberalisation process included granting private companies licenses allowing them to trade cocoa.