“If you ask someone else to create the world you want, it will be small, but if you commit to creating your own world, it will be big. You have an enormous potential and the courage to believe and invest in your ideas to create a better future for you and your communities,” says Alphonse Amani, manager of the cocoa and coffee programme of Rikolto in Côte d’Ivoire, during a marketing course for young entrepreneurs organised by Rikolto in the San Pedro farming community.
In the heart of the cocoa fields, it is not the youthful vigour of a new generation that is taking charge of the production, but the weathered hands of farmers, on average 50 years old, toiling alongside their children. Despite the legal bans introduced in Côte d’Ivoire in 2019 prohibiting children under the age of 18 from performing dangerous tasks such as wielding machetes or handling agrochemicals, child labour still accounted for around 39% of the agricultural workforce in 2019 (Norc, University of Chicago1) due to a persistent lack of professionalised and affordable labour in cocoa-growing communities.
The cocoa business is not profitable for the owners of the cocoa plantations. Only 6.6% of the $138 billion generated by the global cocoa trade trickles back down into the hands of cocoa farmers2. This statistic reveals a grim reality: 75% of smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast do not earn a living income (2021, Wageningen university)3, which worsens issues like child labour and youth exodus. Lacking viable opportunities in their rural communities, young people are lured to urban centres or emigrate in search of illusory employment opportunities, leaving the cocoa fields and their communities behind.
Should we be worried? This situation weighs on our conscience, and invites us, as consumers who enjoy chocolate products, to consider the well-being of the communities and ecosystems that provide nearly half of the world’s cocoa beans. The price of cocoa has reached unprecedented heights, soaring in 2023 and continuing to rise in 2024, yet this increase in value has failed to translate into improved returns for producers. The complex dynamics of this price escalation are intertwined with speculative manoeuvres in the stock market and growing concerns about low production in major cocoa producing origins.
Cocoa farmers are plagued by a litany of challenges, including ageing trees, pests and diseases, small plantations, climate change, depleted soils, lack of access to adequate agricultural inputs and labour shortages. These myriad factors contribute to poor harvests but also drive farmers to expand into new areas at the expense of forests and ecosystems already threatened by climate change.
At Rikolto, we believe that the willpower of young people can be the force for change in cocoa-growing communities, which is why we engaged with over 600 young people in cocoa-producing areas in Cote d’Ivoire in 2023.
Young people show little interest in cocoa farming, largely due to its lack of profitability, but they also struggle to envision an alternative future as their communities rely heavily on cocoa as their sole economic livelihood. With limited access to finance, training and education, their potential remains untapped, stifled by these constraints. Like any young generation, however, they are full of ideas and dreams waiting to be unleashed. How do we tap into their aspirations?
Thanks to funding from DGD, the Collibri Foundation (funded by the Colruyt Group) and SUCDEN (a global commodity trading group), and in partnership with local organisations such as ICT4DEV and the farmers’ cooperative ECSP, we have channelled resources into initiatives exclusively for young people.
Eager to explore new avenues in cocoa farming, these young people have received extensive training to provide professional farm management services, from pruning and spraying to harvesting and post-harvest activities. A total of 10 Agricultural Service Providing Units (ASPUs) now employ 431 young people, who are paid by their own communities and contribute to the development of the local economy. This has also alleviated the labour shortages their parents previously faced, especially during peak seasons, reducing the need to resort to child labour. It has also helped to boost plantation productivity by 20% per hectare.
In order to develop their entrepreneurial skills, we provided training in marketing, finance and business management, as well as technical advice and equipment. Several ideas, ranging from poultry farms to input stores and market gardening ventures, were structured into 25 business plans. In addition, extensive training in good agricultural practices from experienced agricultural engineers has enabled these young people not only to run their farms efficiently, but also to provide advice to fellow community members, earning them respect and recognition.
“We received chicks, medicines and food to raise the chicks, and we were able to access finance to invest in our operations... This has enabled us to be self-sufficient,” explains Yao Kouakou Wilfred, one of the young farmers who have embarked on a new venture and found success in poultry farming.
Today, Yao Kouakou Wilfred is one of the main suppliers of eggs, chickens and chicken manure to the San Pedro market.
Diversification is both a catalyst for the empowerment of these young people and a cornerstone for thriving communities in these regions. Despite a promising 31% increase in income for the 102 households involved in Colruyt’s Beyond Chocolate initiative, their average income corresponds to only 45% of the living income benchmark (2023, Impact Institute4). Cocoa sales alone are not enough to close the living income gap and relying solely on private actors like Puratos and Colruyt to pay premiums for quality cocoa is not enough.
Does this mean we should abandon efforts to promote inclusive practices between buyers and producers? Far from it. But it is imperative that we broaden our perspective beyond cocoa production itself. Industry players such as SUCDEN, Colruyt and JB Cocoa have already chosen to invest in initiatives that facilitate access to credit at the village level, encourage entrepreneurship and promote diverse income opportunities.
The savings and loan associations set up as part of our programme, incorporating 384 villages and mostly made up of women, have reinvested community savings totalling €173,000 in income-generating activities ranging from poultry farming to cassava production and processing, as well as in children’s education and cocoa farming inputs.
Twelve tree nurseries have been established, resulting in more than 94,000 new trees being planted over 4,000 hectares in different cocoa-producing communities in Cote d’Ivoire. This includes six indigenous cocoa species and trees for various crops, as required by climate-smart strategies such as agroforestry. Producers were trained in the Ivorian Forest Code and visited demonstration plots showcasing agroforestry practices aimed at mitigating the impact of climate change on cocoa production while simultaneously contributing to increased forest cover in Cote d’Ivoire.
As long as we look at these interventions in isolation, they will remain nothing more than laudable initiatives that garner a little attention and statistics filling up reports. However, by framing them as pieces of a bigger puzzle and by sharing our on-the-ground experience in broader forums – such as the International Living Income workshop in Abidjan, organised by the Living Income Community of Practice (LICOP), which brought together public and private stakeholders – we aimed to stimulate collaboration among cocoa sector stakeholders and ultimately create an enabling environment for scaling up these interventions.
In fact, while these interventions address different food system challenges, they ultimately contribute in different ways to the same overarching goal: ensuring a living income for smallholder cocoa farmers and affordable and nutritious food for everyone. Achieving this would lead to more resilient cocoa communities and a brighter future for cocoa.
Would a generation of motivated young people not be the perfect long-term, low-risk investment for all actors in the cocoa value chain?
Sources:
(3) https://www.wur.nl/en/newsarticle/living-income-in-cocoa.htm
(4) Impact Institute, Scaling up – Recommendations for building a strong financial and broader impact business case for the Beyond Chocolate initiative, Final report – November 2023
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