“The current increase in producer price for a bag (64kg) of cocoa from GH¢ 515 to GH¢ 666 is about the welfare of cocoa farmers and not about politics.
When world prices for cocoa from 2017 to 2018 plummeted, the NPP government maintained the producer price for cocoa farmers… even when it was under pressure from world bodies for Ghana to also reduce its producer price for cocoa farmers as was done by Côte d’Ivoire.”
Yaw Buaben Asamoa
NPP Communication Director
Cocoa! Call it “amelonado” or “theobroma cacao”, if you are technically minded. The Asantes call it “kookoo”, and the correct English pronunciation is close to “keukeu”, and we think we have the permission of the class of 2003 of the Ghana School of Law to so pronounce it.
You may have heard that Tetteh Quarshie brought it to the Gold Coast in 1876, having swallowed some beans. No. That sounds mythological. Six weeks on a ship from Fernando Po, now called Bioko in Equatorial Guinea, and you do not think he would evacuate the swallowed beans when he went to toilet, if he should?
True, he “smuggled” some six pods and as a former Customs Deputy Commissioner in charge of “Preventive”, I should be careful about the use of the word “smuggled”! It is “suspected” (and again, as a lawyer, I should be careful about the use of the word “suspected”) that he put some six pods of the “golden pod” in his tool kit, he, Tetteh Quarshie, being a blacksmith.
When he returned to the Gold Coast in 1876, he tried growing the crop in his ancestral home area in Christiansborg (Osu) but the clayey soil did not support it to survive. It was when he moved to work for the Basel Mission at Akropong in 1879 that he found that the luxuriant forest could sustain it.
Cocoa has, for a long time, been the mainstay of the Gold Coast/Ghana’s economy. The past governments had to rely on cocoa for revenues for their projects and programmes – thus, the interest of the nation beclouded that of the farmers. Asantes, among other Gold Coasters and other Ghanaians, took seriously to farming. The big houses at Ashanti New Town (Ash-Town) were built from cocoa money. Supporters of United Party (UP) and later National Liberation Movement (NLM) were enthused about the logo of the party (cocoa) and the slogan: “Wobeye biribiara a, kookoo” (literally: whatever you do, it is cocoa that you depend on).
Some of us who are cocoa farmers’ children are enthused about the government’s policies on cocoa – to increase the producer price. The last producer price (2019/2020) was GH¢515; but for 2020/2021, the price has been raised to GH¢ 666 per bag. “Thank God for small mercies”. Those who were gathered at Sefwi Wiawso were particularly hilarious; they couldn’t believe their eyes and their ears. The President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo had raised the producer price – again. There was spontaneous applause (a standing ovation) to welcome the announcement. “Kookooase kuraseni”, Sir John, would have waved a white handkerchief.
Thanks to the good deeds of the present government – and especially to the yeoman’s job of Joseph Boahen Aidoo, the CEO of Ghana Cocoa Board. It’s all got to do with “negotiating skills”. With Hackman Owusu as Board Chairman, you can go to sleep –he will do the work. To arrange with Côte d’Ivoire (which with Ghana supply 60% of the world’s cocoa) for a common price! This would have sounded unachievable a few years back by the naysayers, because we had always seen Cote d’Ivoire as a “difficult” country. Now, no more. Ivorians are not just neighbours. They are our brothers and sisters – check our names, our food, our behaviour, our customs and traditions – except that by our colonial experience, they speak French (Francophone) while we speak English (Anglophone).
But, what do we see? The plight of the cocoa farmer: deep inside the forest, living in ramshackle huts; susceptible to all kinds of diseases, reptiles, rodents and animals; denying their wards education; still using age –old cutlasses and matchetes; bent bodies weeding from morning till evening; poor diet; producing more children because there being few social activities and the nights falling quickly, their only source of entertainment is sex!
But what do we do with the produce? “Alata samina” or “amonkye” can be made from cocoa. What use do we make of them? And talk of chocolate, and ask how many cocoa farmers’ children have ever tasted chocolate – till Kufour’s government introduced some “social intervention policies”. Just as we used to do with our gold nuggets – just throw them at birds to kill them!
We do not have to be jealous of Japan for churning out “Ghana Chocolate” and earning huge revenues; we do not have to be jealous of Belgium for reaping where they have not sown, and yet profiting from our sweat and getting huge profits from our export of raw cocoa beans.
Can’t we be more creative, more inventive and more aggressive? It saddens one’s heart to hear of scandals affecting cocoa, among which are funds for Cocoa Roads and their misapplication. As reiterated by Yaw Buaben Asamoa, “…the 131 projects under Feeder Roads was valued at just GH¢1.5 billion. Again, the average cost per kilometre of trunk roads in the contract award was GH¢2.5 million, more than double the kilometre cost of the feeder roads at GH¢1.16 million.” It saddens one’s heart to hear, “From the government’s audit report on cocoa roads, it was realised that the previous NDC government inflated the cost of the construction of the Prestea to Samreboi road in the Western Region by 121.8 per cent.”(sic)
Where do we place the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) at Bunso in all this? We hear they have developed some types of “alata samina” which is eagerly sought after in Europe. CRIG is credited for the control of black pod disease (phytophtora megakarya) and for successes in extension officers’ education of the farmers in cocoa fermentation and flavour. It is to be credited for the production of pectin, alcoholic beverages, animal feed, jelly soap and cosmetics as by-products from cocoa waste. But let us see and taste your whiskey made from cocoa. Package these better, and see the results.
It is significant that a consortium of local and international banks had an agreement to lend $1.3 billion to the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) to be used to purchase cocoa beans from farmers for the 2020/2021 crop season. It is equally significant to note that the bids for the loan were over-subscribed by $400 million by the 28 banks that are syndicating the funds for onward transfer to the cocoa sector. This loan attracts an interest of 1.74 per cent, in addition to the London Inter Bank Overnight Rate (LIBOR), a global reference for setting interest rates on offshore loans. What is most significant, however, is the introduction of the Living Income Differential (LID), a pricing mechanism that guarantees an additional $400 per tonne of cocoa beans sold by Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.
Hopefully, the incentive will ginger farmers to work harder to enable Ghana to purchase the envisaged 900,000 tonnes of cocoa beans in the coming cocoa season.
Africanus Owusu-Ansah
africanusowusu1234@gmail.com