The “chocolate cartels”: Ivory Coast and Ghana grapple with cocoa trafficking
At a time when cocoa prices are soaring, Ivorian and Ghanaian farmers remain subject to an extremely low purchase price, set by the state. While the authorities regularly raise their prices, they watch almost helplessly as a bean trafficking operation is emerging, aimed at extracting a better price abroad. The international press describes a business worth millions of euros.
It's a "dangerous but lucrative business" that Bloomberg is interested in . The American media outlet traveled to western Côte d'Ivoire, through forests and grasslands crisscrossed by dirt tracks. "After dark, motorcycle couriers arrive at warehouses near the border [with Guinea and Liberia] and load two or three bags of cocoa, each weighing about 65 kilos. Around 10 p.m., they set off in convoy, avoiding checkpoints, to transport the precious beans to Guinea."
Behind this small ballet of motorcycles, however, hides a sprawling business, warns the journalist. “This sector is essentially a wholesale trade in which organized networks with high-level connections use trucks to transport up to 30 tons of cocoa at a time, say smugglers, officials, and traders.”
In Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together produce around 2.5 million tonnes of cocoa annually, two-thirds of the world's total, cocoa bean trafficking is growing. Seizures and other police raids regularly make headlines in the local press, to the point that the Financial Times describes the rise of "chocolate cartels."
Courrier International
