From Craig Murray, October 18:
I attended a State Dinner in Accra a couple of nights ago in honour
of President Ouatttara of Ivory Coast. Ghanaian President Nana Akuffo
Addo made a speech which included the striking fact that Ghana and Ivory
Coast produce between them 65% of the world’s cocoa, and yet receive
only 5.5% of the income of the world chocolate industry.
This simple fact sums up much of the dilemma of Africa; stuck in
primary commodity production and still, after decades of concentrated
effort, unable to develop value added or to obtain a price for
commodities – and particularly for farmers – that reflects their
importance to the global value chain.
Cocoa has been one of the most successful areas of endeavour for the
Fairtrade movement, but all of that has only resulted in that 5.5%
figure, which without Fairtrade would be still lower. It is possible to
buy Ghanaian made finished chocolate product in British supermarkets
now, and excellent it is too, but it has a very small market share.
Producing finished chocolate in Africa has its problems; chocolate is a
much more delicate cargo than cocoa beans and reacts badly to either
heat or refrigeration. Recipes which overcome this problem result in a
certain harshness.
There has been some progress made in processing of the raw cocoa
beans in Africa into butter and solids, but not on a scale which
fundamentally affects the market.
The current Ghanaian government has made a major point of this issue. Here is Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta addressing
it at the G20 Summit for Africa earlier this year. There is however no
desire by the political and corporate establishment of the developed
world to assist in any way.
Cooperation with Ivory Coast is obviously key to progress, but the
two countries lack the financial reserves that would be required to
initiate effective cartelisation; while I have to admit, against my own
inclinations, that a free market in sales by the cocoa farmers has
provided a much better living to them than the decades of efforts at
state monopoly or various forms of price intervention. In Ghana both the
Minister of Trade and the Chairman of the Cocoa Board at the moment
happen to be old friends of mine and I hope to discuss the possible ways
forward with them over the next week or so.
The situation is even further complicated by the hypothecation of
Ghana’s cocoa revenue some years ago to repay China for the Bui
Hydroelectric dam project. This was always a very poor project in terms
of design and available water in the Volta watershed, and has had a
number of disastrous wildlife consequences. There has been a huge amount
of trumpeting of Chinese “aid” projects in Africa, but my experience
has been that they are even more designed to help the “donor” country
than Western aid, and almost always turn out to be loan rather than
grant. As with the Bui Dam project, this is usually disguised in a lack
of transparency about the underlying financial arrangements, and the
Chinese surge into Africa has ramped up levels of corruption still
further.
All that is true throughout Africa. There has been a further
development specific to Ghana. Chinese convict labour was imported to
build the Bui Dam. Many of the workers absconded into the countryside,
taking the earth moving equipment with them, and started illegal
gold-mining....MORE
