President John Dramani Mahama has called for a major shift in Ghana’s cocoa industry, urging reforms to move the sector from raw bean exports to value-added processing.
Speaking at the Tree Crop Investment Summit in Accra, he said recent disruptions in the cocoa market have highlighted the risks of relying heavily on unprocessed exports.
According to President Mahama, Ghana’s traditional cocoa financing model, which relies on collateralising beans to secure external funds for purchases and exports, has limited the country’s ability to supply enough raw cocoa to local processors.
To address this, the government has decided to raise funds locally in cedis to pay farmers, enabling a portion of cocoa beans to be allocated to domestic processing.
“Recently, we’ve had a crisis with cocoa. It hasn’t affected only Ghana. It’s affected all cocoa-producing countries. And it shows how unstable raw material exports are if you don’t process and add value,” President Mahama said.
He emphasized that Ghana has long been a leading exporter of raw cocoa, dating back to the colonial era under Governor Gordon Guggisberg, but noted that the country should aim to become a leader in manufacturing cocoa products.
The president explained that the new approach will increase local processing capacity, create jobs within the value chain, and help stabilise cocoa prices.
“That is why government took the decision that we should change the funding cycle of cocoa by raising the money locally, paying the farmers, and then allocating a certain portion of the cocoa beans to our processing capacity,” he said.
President Mahama described the current market challenges as a turning point for Ghana’s cocoa industry, urging stakeholders to seize the moment to transform the sector and enhance both economic stability and domestic job creation.
Source: Starrfm.com.gh
