Soaring cocoa prices: Blessing or curse for African farmers? | DW News

West Africa is king, when it comes to cocoa - the entire world has a love affair with chocolate, and without cocoa, chocolate is a no-go. African nations dominate the global cocoa trade, with Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria producing 70 percent of the cocoa beans consumed globally.

But that taste for chocolate is proving an expensive habit, and some analysts say the price of the sweet stuff may soon be twice what it was, because the cost of the raw material is only going up: The price of a ton of cocoa has increased almost fivefold since late 2023.

So how does that compare to other objects of desire, say microchips?

Since the start of the year, Cocoa prices have even outperformed shares in the world's leading computer chip giant, Nvidia.

So what's driving prices so high? Ghana, the world's second largest producer is facing a catastrophic harvest, in a deepening cocoa crisis. Producers have seen a wave of illegal gold mining wipe out their trees, with many deciding just to sell their plots.

Climate change is also doing its damage: Ghana has slashed its cocoa forecast this year because of hotter, drier weather.

Cameroon is Africa's third largest cocoa producer, and one farmer there said "cocoa season is a season of cash." Cocoa provides about 90% of the income for rural communities involved in its production. DW's Blaise Eyong spoke to a farmer in the village of Loum, in Cameroon's Littoral region who is turning his cash crop into consumer goods.

That's boosting one thing: the cocoa industry's equivalent of the covid pandemic, a viral disease that ruins yields before it kills the trees completely.

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