The Côte d’Ivoire – Ghana Cocoa Initiative has disclosed that it is working assiduously to ensure better pricing of cocoa for farmers.

The Côte d’Ivoire – Ghana Cocoa Initiative (CIGCI) is a cocoa alliance set up by the presidents of the two countries to raise cocoa prices.

The two countries jointly control 60% of global cocoa production.

Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire in 2019 demanded a $400 premium from cocoa buyers called the Living Income Differential.

Speaking at the Cocoa Advocacy Workshop, Technical Manager for the Initiative, Tawiah Agyarko-Kwarteng, stated that although the Living Income Differential Pricing was established not long ago, farmers are still not benefiting from their produce.

“At the Côte d’Ivoire Ghana Cocoa Initiative, we have been focused representing our two countries to engage in collaborative discussion with the various actors in the sector. Volatile pricing has been a problem for the cocoa sector which is not allowing the farmers to get the true benefits that they should be getting.”

“We have actively engaged over the past few months with partners in the industry to ensure that we kick start conversations on the actions that we all need to take to help our farmers get better pricing,” she said.

The National Fair Trade Platforms organised a Cocoa Advocacy Workshop to discuss challenges and opportunities in the sector, new regulations and compliance among others.

A member of the Fair Trade Ghana Network, Stephen Ashia said the “workshop is a very good one which was sponsored by AVSF. “I think this is a very good programme for us to have a meeting to discuss how we can improve cocoa production and also the pricing of the cocoa,” he said.

President of Fair Trade Platform Cote D’Ivoire, Fortin Bley applauded the rationale behind the workshop.

He is optimistic that proceedings of the workshop will translate into better livelihoods for farmers.

“We have been here for about a week and we are really happy for the initiative between Ghana and Cote D’lvoire. And we hope that all those initiatives will enable our farmers to have a good living income,” he said.

The Cocoa Advocacy Workshop was themed “Structuring the Coordination of Our Platforms in Order to strengthen our Joint Capacity for Dialogue on the Necessary Fair Sharing of Value within the Cocoa Sector”.