At the Global Gateway Forum in Brussels, Ghana’s Vice President, Jane Opoku-Agyemang, delivered a powerful message on the need for fairness and sustainability in the global cocoa industry.
Speaking at the Sustainable Cocoa Initiative Scale-up session, she traced Ghana’s cocoa journey from Tetteh Quarshie’s first beans to today’s network of over 800,000 farmers. She emphasized that true sustainability in cocoa must go hand in hand with equity for the farmers who sustain the sector.
Opoku-Agyemang noted that while the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) offers an opportunity to strengthen regional value chains, access to affordable financing remains a key obstacle.
“Investments often concentrate in multinational or state-owned facilities, leaving local processors struggling with high borrowing costs,” she said.
To tackle this imbalance, she proposed “structured blended financing models” that blend capital investment with affordable working capital, risk-sharing mechanisms, and technical support particularly for small and rural processors.
She described the EU Sustainable Cocoa Initiative and the Global Gateway Framework as vital platforms to crystallize such partnerships.
Her remarks also touched on the importance of resilience amid rising global cocoa prices and supply shortfalls.
She highlighted Ghana’s openness to collaborations that support pest and disease control while expanding commercial plantations for quality assurance.
Reaffirming confidence in Ghana’s systems, she said; “Our grading and quality control remain among the most rigorous in the world, and reforms at COCOBOD are aimed at fairness and investor confidence.”
The Vice President concluded by reiterating Ghana’s commitment to move beyond raw exports.
“We must build an economy that empowers farmers, creates decent jobs, and promotes sustainability,” she stated, underscoring her vision for a fair and thriving cocoa industry that rewards its people as much as it sweetens the world.
