Nigeria and Cameroon have requested to join the Cote d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative (CIGCI), a joint body spearheading the interests of the two countries in the cocoa trade.
This was revealed on Wednesday by the head of the initiative, Alex Assanvo.
The initiative was set up after a 2018 declaration by Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s first and second-largest cocoa producers, on willingness to define a common sustainable cocoa strategy that would raise prices paid to farmers.
It was created with the view of including other African countries.
Representatives from Cameroon and Nigeria were invited to a CIGCI meeting in Abidjan to begin the process of joining the initiative, Assanvo told reporters after the meeting.
“With Cameroon and Nigeria we are going to represent around two-thirds of global cocoa production,” Yves Brahima Kone, chief executive of the Ivory Coast Cocoa and Coffee Council, said at the meeting.
“This will allow us to have more leeway in discussions with the industry on imposing a decent price for our cocoa farmers.”
Nigeria is the fourth largest cocoa producer worldwide, according to World Atlas, with major cocoa-producing states in Ondo, Cross River, Ogun, Akwa Ibom, Ekiti, Delta, Osun and Oyo.
Cocoa production is important to the economy of Nigeria. Cocoa is the leading agricultural export of the country and Nigeria is currently the world’s fourth largest producer of cocoa, after Ivory Coast, Indonesia and Ghana, and the third largest exporter, after Ivory Coast and Ghana.
The crop was a major foreign exchange earner for Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s and in 1970 the country was the second largest producer in the world but following investments in the oil sector in the 1970s and 1980s, Nigeria’s share of world output declined.
In 2010, cocoa production accounted for only 0.3% of agricultural GDP.
Average cocoa beans production in Nigeria between 2000 and 2010 was 389,272 tonnes per year rising from 170,000 tonnes produced in 1999.
