AFRICA’S COCOA FARMING LANDSCAPE

COCOA HAS always been a staple resource exported from Africa – Ghana and Ivory Coast alone grow 60 percent of the globe’s cocoa. In Ghana, cocoa plantations provide a vast number of jobs and subsequent livelihoods to individuals and communities alike, not to mention seven percent of the country’s export earnings (producing approximately 850,000 tonnes last year according to Statista).

But the cocoa farmers largely live in poverty, with the mixture of labour-intensive work, long hours, and the climbing price of chemicals (used by the workers to maintain their farms), causing many to struggle to break from the inadequate states they live in.

This is largely down to how much the individual worker is paid. Overall, the workers harvest thousands of tonnes.