IDK if there have been any posts on this site regarding Ghana & Cote d'Ivoire standing up against European chocolate companies, so I am going to post about it here.

These two countries produce a huge portion of the world's cocoa - about 60% altogether - but the overwhelming majority of this is sold to companies mostly in Europe that process it into chocolate. Most of the value in chocolate comes from the processing. The result is your typical neocolonial situation - wealth gets siphoned to the imperialist core, farmers in the exploited countries remain poor, and industrial development of these countries is slow or stagnant. You also end up with a perverse reality where many cocoa farmers have never eaten chocolate.

In order to improve the conditions of cocoa farmers, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire introduced the Living Income Differential (LID) in 2019. This was a $400/tonne surcharge on cocoa exports that would go towards farmers. In October this year, Ghanaian cocoa farmers were enrolled into a pension plan as a result. Unsurprisingly, cocoa trade journals and bourgeois newspapers like Bloomberg have called it a failure. In reality, it is having trouble because there is another premium based on bean quality called the origin differential. This premium has fallen a lot in recent years, which lowers the price of cocoa and negates the LID. In fact this premium has gone negative in these two countries and some Europeans want it to be -$236 per tonne. So on July 29 the producer countries stated they won't sell cocoa at negative origin differentials (specifically, no less than $0 in Cote d'Ivoire and no less than $23 in Ghana). I'm not exactly sure why the premium has gone down so much, but Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire say that quality hasn't diminished and European companies are fibbing. That's not hard to believe.

Also in October, Nigeria and Cameroon expressed interest in joining a cocoa trade alliance with Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. I don't think there's been any further development since then but it's only been a month. There was also a World Cocoa Foundation at the end of the month that Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire boycotted, telling buyers to get their act together by November 20 or else they would prevent European companies from visiting cocoa farms and suspend programs that these chocolate companies use to paint themselves as sustainable. So it's now the 21st and there is a communique by Ghanaian and Ivorian cocoa organizations stating that progress is being made and there will be a report in Q1 of next year. Yeah, not the most exciting conclusion but this stuff happens pretty slowly!

It's important to keep in mind that this struggle over cocoa prices is only part of a larger neocolonial struggle. First, relating to cocoa exports - the EU threatened to ban cocoa from the two countries in 2021 due to land degradation, showcasing how the west exploits sustainability concerns to further their imperialist ambitions. Of course this would have screwed over European chocolate companies too, which is maybe why it never happened. Second, although the LID is a good development for cocoa farmers and national sovereignty, it does not challenge the extractivist nature of neocolonialism. Ghana is working on this as well and has had a state-owned (I think) manufacturer of chocolate for a while, but they are trying to ramp up that industry. The Deputy CEO of Ghana's export promotion authority has stated his desire for every Ghanaian to taste chocolate and for the country to export chocolate to the world. Ghana is one of the states trying to establish a west African currency, so France definitely has an interest in the obliteration of Ghana's and Cote d'Ivoire's ambitions. Third, Ghana used to be a major gold ore exporter but in recent years built refineries to process their own gold and improve their position in the gold trade. The Bank of Ghana is also increasing their gold reserves. Recently, Ghana has been hit hard by inflation, the IMF wants to do its thing cause Ghana keeps borrowing from them, and has had its credit rating decreased.