How African cocoa-growers are moving upstream into chocolate
April 4th 2007
FUN though it is to pretend that a magic bunny provided the chocolate in your Easter basket, it is much more likely to have been grown by smallholders in West Africa, the region that produces 70% of the world’s cocoa. The crop is an important source of income for many countries—the largest producer, Côte d’Ivoire, earns over 20% of its export revenues from cocoa. But although global sales of chocolate amount to some $75 billion a year, growers capture only a tiny fraction of this: around $4 billion a year from the sale of cocoa beans.
