Archive for the ‘cocoa’ Category

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Ivorian Cocoa Flows Again

Tuesday, May 17th, 2011
Port of San Pedro

Port of San Pedro. Source: financeasia.com

Just a week ago, the first cargo ship left the port of San Pedro laden with cocoa. The chocolate industry can breathe easier again and things, at least related to cocoa, are returning to normal again. That’s good news for cocoa farmers. When the embargo was put in place, the beans already sold to traders simply ended up at the port. But traders quickly stopped purchasing beans from  farmers who had few options but to store them at their farm. More enterprising farmers near the Ghanian border smuggled their crop to Ghana to get paid.

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Is It Imperialism?

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

After almost six months, the saga of the Ivorian ill-fated election is finally over. Yesterday, April 11, Laurent Gbagbo was arrested and his decade-long reign is over. There is disagreement as to whether he was arrested by the forces supporting Ouattara or by French forces. The French, the UN and Ouattara deny it, the Gbagbo camp asserts it. In either case, there is no doubt that without French intervention, this phase of the conflict would not have come to an end so soon.

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Some Background to the Ivorian Crisis

Friday, February 4th, 2011
Felix Houphouet-Boigny

Felix Houphouet-Boigny

As the standoff continues in the Côte d’Ivoire, I thought it’d be good to provide a little background. After all, there’s more to the story than a sore loser–Gbagbo–not wanting to give up his job as president. To get a little deeper, we have to look at how Côte d’Ivoire became the world’s largest cocoa producer.

Ivorian planters were initially slow to embrace cocoa and coffee as export crops, but once they did, they quickly ran up against the power of French planters who severely limited access to labor and other inputs. In response, the Ivorian planters formed the Syndicat Africain Agricole (SAA) in 1944. The SAA was more than an interest group. It was the training ground for a new nationalist planter class. The SAA also formed the basis for the Parti Democratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI). Its leader, Houphouet-Boigny, ruled the country from 1960 until 1993.

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Côte d’Ivoire Tragedy Continues

Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
Alassana Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo on election posters

Alassana Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo on election posters. Reuters Photo

First, my apologies for the long silence of this blog. I’ve had a really busy time and blog updates have taken a back seat. But I had to add a post, now that the presidential election in the Côte d’Ivoire has deteriorated into chaos. A quick summary: after five years of delays, the presidential election finally took place on October 31. Initial reports were encouraging, there was little violence and the election seemed to proceed properly. The results let to a runoff election between the two top vote-getters: sitting President Laurent Gbagbo and opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara. The runoff election took place on November 28 and on December 2, the Ivorian Electoral Commission announced that Alassane Ouattare had won the election with 54 percent of the vote.

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Ghana Increases Producer Prices

Friday, October 8th, 2010

With the new cocoa season underway, Ghana’s Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) announced a 33 percent increase in farm gate prices. The new price of GH¢200 per bag lifts the per ton price to GH¢3,200 ($2,238) from last year’s GH2,400. The new prices recognizes the increases in the world market price over the past year.

More importantly, however, it recognizes the prevalence of smuggling which has cut into Ghana’s exports. With some estimates as high as 100,000 tons smuggled to the Côte d’Ivoire last year alone, stopping this outflow has become a top priority of the COCOBOD. Last year’s harvest amounted to 632,024 tons, 10 percent below the 700,000 tons of the 2008/2009 cocoa year.

COCOBOD seems hopeful that the price increase will lift this years total exports above the 700,000 ton level.

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