Ghana’s cocoa fields reveal the bittersweet story of chocolate

Deborah Nkum knows exactly what she wants from life and is remarkably passionate about education, not only for herself, but also her classmates.

“I want to be a doctor. That’s why I have to make sure I do well in science, English and maths,” the 13-year-old explains in the Asikasu Municipal Assembly Junior High School in New Juaben’s makeshift library, as she discusses the importance of education for Ghanaian youth.

Picture: Earl Coetzee

The 2018 Cocoa Barometer estimated that about 2.1 million children are employed in the cocoa fields of Ghana and its neighbour, the Ivory Coast. Nkum, however, hopes to break out of the cycle of poverty that plagues the families that produce one of the world’s most popular delicacies.

“Whatever you do, you should always practise hard,” is her message to fellow pupils. “They should not make excuses and say because their mothers cannot give them money, they don’t come to school. They should read and study hard and become perfect.”

Nkum is in charge of her little rural school’s library and keeping track of all the books her classmates have checked out. The school, which has enrolment figures of fewer than 50 pupils in three dilapidated classes, is one of a few being supported by the Cocoa Life Project, run by Mondelez International, which manufactures Cadbury chocolates. The pupils at the school can consider themselves lucky.

In a country where between 33% and 38% of children are believed to be engaged in child labour, and never finish school, their families have committed to ensure they graduate. And, though small and dilapidated, their school is relatively well equipped when compared with other schools in the country’s rural areas, where children attend classes without windows and doors and livestock roam between the classes.

The Cocoa Life Project also recently gave the school a brand-new hostel for their teachers, some of whom used to miss days of lessons because public transport between nearby towns and the village is erratic at best.

Picture: Earl Coetzee

Cocoa Life

Despite a serious backlash at the announcement of their withdrawal from the well-known Fair Trade Agreement at the time, Cocoa Life was launched in 2012, and got to work with several national and international non-governmental organisations, including World Vision, Anti-Slavery International and the United Nations Development Programme.

Their goals include lobbying against child labour and creating alternate streams of income for cocoa-farming communities during the off-seasons.

This, they said at the time, would lead to the production of “five times more sustainable chocolate in the UK” by 2019, by addressing more than simply the price of raw materials, but also improving basic living conditions for those that produce them. Besides helping children such as Nkum stay in school by educating their parents about the dangers of child labour, the project has also provided training and education in other fields to reduce communities’ reliance on cocoa.

They are currently active in 447 cocoa farming communities, which includes about 37,000 farmers.

Picture: Earl Coetzee

“The one thing that the Cocoa Life Project does in every community is empower farmers and communities to build their own futures,” says Navisha Bechan-Sewkuran, manager of corporate and government affairs at Mondelez South Africa. “The intention is to work with partners on the ground and with governments to ensure that all we do is embedded in national programmes for a wider group of farmers.”

A recent media junket to the cocoa farms in Ghana’s Western region highlighted the successes of the project – but like the dark treats made from the country’s cocoa beans, the experience was bittersweet.

Poverty 

The scale of poverty among cocoa farmers is immediately evident, with farmers earning between 30,000 cedis and 35,000 cedis (about R105,000) annually. This money only comes in during harvest season, meaning there is little to live on during the rest of the year.

This prompted Cocoa Life to initiate projects to provide alternative sources of income, including soap making, a community bakery and an innovative community banking scheme in the Mpaem community.

Janet Gyamesi, one of the community bank’s shareholders and beneficiaries, explains that without this bank her children would most likely have faced hardship similar to what she has, having never attended school and working the cocoa fields to raise her four children.

Instead, her 21-year-old son is now a third-year university student, who intends to return to the village and ensure other children get an education. She managed to do this through their little banking scheme, which collects money from its 96 members monthly. This money serves as equity in the bank, while providing capital, which is loaned out to community members and on which interest is payable.

“I believe God knew a time like this would come. That is why our bank came to this community. Without it, my children’s education would have ended at a very low level,” Gyamesi adds. It may not be much, but the three metal toolboxes full of money that serve as their vaults have ensured that several within the community have similar stories to tell. Despite their bank, the Mpaem community doesn’t appear to be much wealthier than other cocoa communities.

While Cadbury reported a net income of $3 billion (R40 billion) in 2016, many of the farmers who grow their main ingredient have never even tasted chocolate, and most probably couldn’t afford it if it were for sale in their communities. The blame for this cannot be fully laid at the door of chocolate manufacturers, as government and other middlemen appear to be taking their cut of the cocoa spoils. According to Bechan-Sewkuran, manufacturers are not allowed to purchase cocoa directly from the farmers.

They instead have to buy from the Ghana Cocoa Board, which, in turn, buys the beans from licensed buyers, all of whom add their mark-up to the price, while prices for farmers have remained relatively stagnant for several years.

Climate change and pollution 

The bureaucratic red tape and battle for higher prices aren’t the cocoa farmers’ only battle though, as climate change and other environmental factors are proving to be thorns in their sides. Farmers invariably complained of the shift in rainfall patterns, meaning their planting season, which used to be between May and August, is now unpredictable.

Erratic rainfall and two consecutive years of drought meant a massive change in how they operate. According to Isaac Tetteh, the officer in charge of the Bunso Cocoa Station’s seed production division, they have had to greatly change the way they operate to ensure farmers can continue producing high-quality beans, while also reducing growing times for seedlings and ensuring their trees don’t die off due to pollutants and other threats. Tetteh says when he started working in the cocoa industry in 1999, their pollination season was in February.

Later rains now mean the season has been moved to late May or early April, greatly reducing the growing season. They have also started experimenting with irrigation projects within the station to determine if this can be expanded to farms elsewhere, when the rains fail to come.

“Unfortunately, due to the pollution in our rivers, there were spores on the pods,” Tetteh explains. “So we cannot do it.”

The major cause of the polluted rivers is apparently due to illegal gold mining upstream, which resulted in waste dumped in the water.

“It’s a serious problem we have in the country. Our government is waging war. Most of them are foreigners, Chinese, who work with our people. They go to a river and they mine right in the river, and now our water is not safe.”

In a pilot project started five years ago, Tetteh and his team started growing and distributing hardier seedlings – up to 60 million of which are distributed countrywide annually.

Due to a sharp decline in bees and other pollinators though, workers at the station have to go to the extraordinary lengths of hand-pollinating the flowers from which cocoa pods grow. An all-female team of pollinators, armed with tiny tweezers, each pollinate about 500 flowers daily by removing pollen from male plants and painstakingly tapping them against the organs of the tiny female flowers. Without this, the pods from which cocoa beans are harvested would cease to exist – and so would chocolate.

Picture: Earl Coetzee

Going forward 

Climate change, pollution, a decrease in pollinators and rampant poverty forcing farmers to find alternate sources of income appear to be a perfect storm of challenges threatening the world’s second-largest cocoa producer.

This doesn’t bode well for chocolate lovers and could result in both a decrease in supply, and an increase in prices. In 2017, Ghana and Ivory Coast, the world’s top two cocoa producers, announced plans to address the conditions under which their national products were produced and traded.

At the time, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo bemoaned the state of affairs that saw their 2015 crops (amounting to 65% of the world supply) only earn their countries $5.7 million, while the world’s chocolate market at the time was worth an estimated $100 billion.

“This means that our farmers, through whose toil and sweat the cocoa industry was founded, earned 5.75% of the global value chain of the industry. This is manifest injustice. It cannot and should not continue,” he was quoted as saying in his government’s official communications.

While the political heads of the two cocoa giants work together to fight for a bigger piece of the pie for their countries, much will need to be done to ensure that this trickles down to the farmers who produce the cocoa. Meanwhile, more projects like Cocoa Life and Fair Trade will be required to ensure that Nkum, her classmates and other children such as Gyamesi’s get a sweeter life.

– earlc@citizen.co.za

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