Cocoa Origin Focus: Ghana - Part 1
- Diego Miranda
- 9 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Ghana Cocoa Sector At-a-Glance
• Production: 700k–800k tons per year.
• Main Regions: Ashanti, Brong-Ahafo, Western North, Eastern.
• Cocoa Type: Mostly Forastero.
• Farm System: 800k+ smallholders, ~2–3 ha each.
• Harvests: Main (Oct–Mar) and light (May–Aug).
• Market: State-regulated by COCOBOD.
• Pricing: Fixed farmgate price set by COCOBOD.
• Economy: Cocoa is 2–3% of GDP, 20% of jobs, one-third of exports.
Introduction
Cocoa is a unique market in part because it is heavily concentrated in a small geographic area encompassing the two West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast. Moreover, the cocoa market in those origins is heavily regulated by the local governments.
While this can make for a dramatic and volatile commodity market, this concentration is also an advantage to cocoa traders: if you can understand these two origins, then you can understand Cocoa. In this article we will focus on Ghana, the smaller of the two juggernauts and one that historically (but not always in present times) had higher quality beans.
Ghana’s modern history is deeply intertwined with cocoa. From an amateur producer in the second half of the 19th century to the top global producer just a few decades later—and then to losing its crown to Ivory Coast—Ghana’s history with cocoa is one of twists and turns that does not fall short of any movie script.
In this Cocoa Origin Focus blog, we will see where Ghana stands, how it came here and what we can expect of the future.
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Why Ghana Matters
For over a century now, Ghana has been one of the most relevant cocoa producers in the world. Now, though, Ghana’s cocoa sector is facing one of its biggest challenges in history. In the last three years, the country was hit by a severe shortage caused by unfavorable weather conditions and terrible fungal diseases, what led cocoa production to plummet, hitting its lowest level in over twenty years.
Although a partial recovery was seen last season, Ghana’s crop remains far below what it was just a few years ago. To make things worse, the country is seeing the appearance of new rivals everywhere, with nations in both West Africa and South America boosting their production considerably. Led by Ecuador, this trend suggests Ghana’s cocoa harvest might see its importance significantly reduced and even lose its place as the second biggest producer.
The reasons behind such a tragedy are many, from inefficient farming methods to a poorly structured market, passing by aging trees and the inability to combat diseases. To understand all these matters, though, we first need to go back in time and see how Ghana’s cocoa sector as we know it today was built, where its failures come from, and what will need to change if Ghana has any hope of remaining one of the global cocoa leaders.
First Boom
Ghana introduction into Ghana was a long process. Although the crop first appeared in the beginning of the 19th century, it was only in 1876 that cocoa’s production actually gained form, when a blacksmith named Tetteh Quarshie introduced brought better new varieties of the crop that were better suited to the Ghanian climate.
After that, cocoa farms spread all throughout the country. By 1911, the Gold Coast (as Ghana was called at the time) had already become the world’s largest cocoa producer, overtaking older regions in Latin America. Ghana’s output surged, and by the mid-20th century, the country was producing such volumes that it accounted for an estimated 30–40% of global cocoa supply.
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The crop quickly became the backbone of the colonial economy. The British colonial administration set up the Cocoa Marketing Board in 1947 to regulate quality and stabilize prices for farmers. The board was the predecessor of the current COCOBOD and acted as the sole buyer of all cocoa in the Gold Coast. By the time Ghana gained independence in 1957, cocoa was the dominant export and source of revenue, earning Ghana a revered place in the emerging global chocolate trade.
Several factors underpinned Ghana’s early cocoa success. The crop was cultivated predominantly by indigenous smallholders rather than large estates, which meant a broad base of growers driving production. The climate, a bimodal rainfall pattern in the south, allowed two harvests each year, and the rich soils of West Africa proved ideal for cocoa trees. Crucially, Ghana built a reputation for high-quality cocoa beans early on, turning its beans into the global benchmark for “premium bulk” cocoa, often attracting a price premium for consistency.
By the 1950s, Ghana was synonymous with cocoa. Production hovered at robust levels, in some years exceeding 300,000 metric tons, making the “Gold Coast” as much the “Cocoa Coast.” The prosperity from cocoa fueled infrastructure and education investments, and some Ghanaian farmers became quite affluent.
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Independence
The aftermath of World War II led to a push for independence in many of the European colonies in West Africa, the Gold Coast among them, amid rising nationalist sentiment and economic grievances. Headed by Kwame Nkrumah, the Convention People's Party (CPP) was able to organize a movement around the motto of "self-government now," through campaigns of boycotts, strikes, and non-cooperation protests.
These tactics proved successful and Nkrumah was appointed Leader of Government Business, the de facto Prime Minister. By 1957, he declared the independence of the Gold Coast as the Republic of Ghana, the first colony to secede from British rule in West Africa. The mood was one of optimism for the world’s biggest cocoa producer, now a sovereign nation that seemed to be looking toward a bright future.
However, unbeknownst to most, the golden age of Ghana’s cocoa was coming to an end as the young nation navigated the waves of sovereignty for the first time.
The Decline
Following its independence, Ghana adopted socialist-oriented policies emphasizing state-led industrialization and import substitution, aiming to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Although cocoa was one of the main sectors of the Ghanaian economy, representing over half of export revenues and supporting around 700,000 farm households, the new socialist government saw dependence on primary commodities as a deficiency to be overcome, favoring areas like manufacturing, mining, and transportation.
As a result, most of Nkrumah’s administration investments were focused on the development of industry, infrastructure, and energy projects. These policies worked against cocoa farmers, as they were heavily taxed to generate revenue for government priorities, which meant farmers received only a fraction of the world’s market price. The cocoa money was complemented by loans taken from the Soviet bloc and Western creditors.
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The new policies quickly led to a decline in the cocoa sector. Production, which had been rising rapidly since the colonial era, stagnated in 1964 after reaching 580,000 tons. The combination of high taxes and low farmgate prices, less than 40% of what was paid in international markets, destroyed the incentive to plant.
To make matters worse, the rest of the economy was not doing well either.
After an initial boost in the early independence years, Nkrumah’s socialist policies led to product shortages, accumulation of external debt, and increasing inflation, which rose from 1% in 1957 to 22.7% in 1965. As cocoa prices were strictly controlled by the government, they were not adjusted along with inflation, causing farmers’ real income to fall year after year.
The unfavorable conditions, coupled with outbreaks of Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus in the 1970s, led to Ghana’s cocoa production collapsing. The country’s crop plunged to only 158,000 tons in the 1983/84 season, less than half of what it had been 20 years earlier. Of the cocoa that was produced, around 20% was smuggled out of the country, mainly to Ivory Coast, which offered higher farmgate prices.
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The Rival Arises
As Ghana faltered, Ivory Coast was on a very different trajectory. Benefiting from fertile new cocoa lands and policies that favored cocoa farming under President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the neighboring country rapidly expanded its plantations. The French-supported system in Ivory Coast (Félix had many French connections due to his education there) provided higher and more stable prices to farmers, and the government encouraged migration of labor into cocoa-growing regions.
By the late 1970s, Ivory Coast’s cocoa production had exploded, overtaking Ghana’s. In fact, Ivory Coast surpassed Ghana to become the world’s leading cocoa producer around 1977–1978. For the first time in nearly seven decades, Ghana had lost its crown. The shift was emblematic of West Africa’s changing cocoa landscape: Ivory Coast was ascendant, while Ghana was mired in difficulties.
Conclusion
Ghana has come a long way when it comes to cocoa. From an insignificant grower, the West African nation rose to become the most important cocoa producer in the world, only to see it all collapse soon after independence. The moment that was supposed to represent Ghana’s leap into the future instead ended in the ruin of millions of small farmers and laborers.
Although there was been over half a century since Ghana’s cocoa tragedy happened, knowing how the cocoa sector began, rose and fell is essential to understanding where it stands today, how the decline was reversed, when its problems remaining problems come from and what we might expect from the future if they are not dealt with.
In the second part of this blog, we will explore how Ghana turned its fortune around, reversing the downfall of the cocoa sector and returning to the world’s table as an essential member of the cocoa markets. That said, we will also pay close attention to all the has remained the same and how the inability to change can become Ghana’s Achilles heel.
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