Chocolate nations: living and dying for cocoa in West Africa, by Órla Ryan, London, Zed Books, 2011, vii + 182 pp., £12.99 (paperback), ISBN 9781848130050
Few people in the North are aware that Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana are the two largest producers of cocoa in the world. Giant multinationals such as Nestlé, Mars and Cadbury (recently acquired by Kraft Foods) largely base their chocolate production on the countless cocoa fields of these two relatively small countries of West Africa. The low prices of chocolate products in Western supermarkets depend on the deals between these companies and the respective countries' cocoa institutions as well as the world market price of cocoa. Few studies have addressed the reality that the large majority of the local populations growing cocoa are trapped in acute poverty. Órla Ryan's book is therefore a welcome contribution.
The book starts with a concise background of Ghana's relation with cocoa cultivation and production and the importance of cocoa to the national economy. The production of cocoa beans in Ghana largely comes from the cultivation of small farmers. However, despite cocoa being the backbone of Ghana's economy and the main export product for the last 50 years, the farmers have remained poor, at the mercy of the annual price of their produce which is fixed by the Ghana Cocoa Board. Chapter 2 presents the fundamentals of Côte d'Ivoire, currently the world's largest producer of cocoa beans. Ryan underlines the relative prosperity Côte d'Ivoire experienced after its independence from France (1960) but also the political instability and violence that erupted during the last years and after the fall of Félix Houphouët-Boigny's one-party rule. The author addresses the complex problem of land rights in Côte d'Ivoire and how this – together with the long-standing questions of migration and ethnic identity – proved to be the key for violence between local people and migrants and a civil war between the northern and the southern regions of the country (2002–2003). Interestingly though, the author suggests, the flow of cocoa from the plantations to the port of Abidjan continued almost undisturbed in order to support the production of cocoa products in Europe and the United States.
Chapter 3 sheds light on the problem of child labour in cocoa plantations in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. This is a very sensitive subject for both countries as a series of recent media reports and parliamentary questions, in Europe and the United States, over employing children in cocoa production threatened to damage exports of cocoa from West Africa. Ryan contextualises this question and effectively addresses the complexity of the issue. The demanding harvest seasons and the periodical needs for labour in the plantations that rural households experience are often difficult to distinguish from trafficking and exploitation of children for cocoa production. While thousands of children are indeed exploited in cocoa plantations, others are claimed to be family members who assist their parents and relatives only during the harvest season as the households are too poor to afford hiring external workers. Monitoring of the situation is extremely difficult due to the large number of small cocoa fields scattered across both countries.
The next two chapters explore the politics and economy of cocoa through two specific stories. In Chapter 4 Ryan tells us the story of Guy André Kieffer, a French-Canadian journalist who, while researching the politics of cocoa business in Côte d'Ivoire in 2004, was allegedly kidnapped and murdered. Through his case, Ryan explores the dirty politics of cocoa business during the Gbagbo administration and how things have remained largely unchanged since. Chapter 5 examines the case of an American entrepreneur who, having lived in Ghana for some time during his school years, decided to invest in a chocolate factory in Accra. Ryan presents a detailed account of the bureaucratic and logistical challenges entailed in producing chocolate in Ghana, far from the industrial centres of the West where to compete with such commercial giants as Mars and Cadbury and to gain space on the shelves of the big supermarket chains often seems an impossibility. The author suggests that the challenges of producing finished chocolate made in Africa and competing with the multinationals are so many that the low taxes an African chocolate company would face when exporting to Europe are not disturbing the multinationals which dominate the market. Even commercial agreements such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act have made little difference for investors in African chocolate manufacturers.
In Chapter 6 Ryan highlights the impact of such companies as Fairtrade on the livelihoods of cocoa farmers. Ryan convincingly argues that the need for quick cash on the part of farmers and buyers during harvest season is such that initiatives like Fairtrade have little impact on the overall turnover of cash and cocoa in countries like Ghana. Although local Fairtrade co-operatives guarantee a minimum price to farmers, the need for swift cash transactions and the overall size of the market mean that such co-operatives have little influence and marginal effect on the lives of the farmers. The producers remain poor and highly dependent on the fluctuations of world market price and the political decisions of the cocoa institutions in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. In Chapter 7 Ryan exposes the lack of transparency in regards to cocoa information and speculation in Ghana and the bureaucratic cocoa institutions of Côte d'Ivoire. Both economies remain vulnerable to price fluctuations with the farmers at the bottom of a cocoa pyramid. There are indications that farmers are getting increasingly discouraged from continuing to produce cocoa and are moving to others crops or professions, especially the younger generations. The author suggests some solutions to these problems: greater transparency, government backing, training, more scientific knowledge being made available to the farmers, and finally, greater willingness on the part of Western consumers to pay more for the final product in the supermarkets.
In Chocolate nations Ryan uses her experience as a reporter in West Africa to construct an eloquent and detailed analysis of the complexity of cocoa production, farmers' livelihoods and commercial and consumer practices of the chocolate industry. However, she appears reluctant to sufficiently highlight the very political nature of the problems of the current system of cocoa and chocolate production, tending to approach the issue as a principally ‘technical’ matter, where an improvement in the training of the farmers or scientific breakthroughs can promise a better future for cocoa workers. Nevertheless this work, with its originality, first-hand experience and detailed evidence, is compulsory reading for anyone interested in the trade, imbalances and injustice of cocoa and chocolate production today.