Reportage

Côte d'Ivoire: Despite a fixed price, cocoa farmers cannot make ends meet

Audio 01:29

A farmer stirs drying cocoa beans in the village of Bringakro, in the Djekanou sub-prefecture, on November 17, 2022. © Sia Kambou / AFP

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

In Côte d'Ivoire, the cocoa marketing period is up and down.

It started on October 1 and ends at the end of the month.

If this year, the Coffee and Cocoa Council has set the sale price per kilo at 900 CFA francs to better remunerate the planters, the latter are still going through difficulties. 

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With our special correspondent in Singrobo,

Bineta Diagne

Étienne Kouakou sorts the cocoa beans spread out in the sun.

This cooperative manager notices that the buyers are late in making

their payments to the growers

.

“ 

In fairness, we must sell individually.

Because the planter comes to sell his product because, perhaps, he has an emergency.

If he comes and doesn't find the agent, it becomes difficult

 ,” he laments.

Boniface Kouacou is a planter in Soubré.

Its

productions have not found a buyer

for the moment and this represents 13 bags of 120 kg of cocoa beans, stored in a room for several weeks.

“ 

My client came, he weighed my cocoa productions and he told me to wait.

I am helpless

,

 I need my money.

I couldn't even afford my children's school books this year.

It is the money from the cocoa that allows me to finance all these expenses

 ,” he confides.

Augustin Diallo produces nearly five tons of dried cocoa beans per year.

For him, the price set by the Coffee Cocoa Council

seems derisory

compared to the costs borne by the planters.

“  We paid

8,000 CFA

francs

for fertilizer

, and it came down to 15,000

and this year, it's 25,000

for a 50 kg bag of

fertilizer.

If I want to fertilize my field, if I want to spray it, if I want to do my three weeding passes, I earn nothing

!

 »

The only perspective according to this producer: the creation of a cocoa inter-branch, in order to better train and

organize the planters

.

To read also: 

Towards the creation of a Cocoa Exchange in Africa?

The solution in the industrialization of the sector, according to Séraphin Prao

Why do cocoa growers regularly encounter problems marketing their production?

For Professor Séraphin Prao, economist and teacher-researcher at Alassane Ouattara University in Bouaké, it is a whole system that still needs to be improved, with an emphasis on the industrialization of the sector.

“If cocoa-producing countries process more of it, it could push up cocoa prices on the international market,” explains Séraphin Prao, economist and teacher-researcher.

Bineta Diagne

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