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doi:10.1093/cdj/bsaa046
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Transnational corporations,
financialization and community
development in West African
cocoa
Kojo S.Amanor*
Abstract This article examines the role of financial capital in the cocoa industry
of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. It argues that the processes of structural
adjustment in the 1980s and 1990s brought two important elements into
play. Firstly, transnational corporations taking advantage of the opening
of global markets to gain control over the cocoa sector, and secondly,
financial institutions promoting ‘country platforms’ that encouraged
public–private partnerships to mobilize foreign investments and define
development objectives. This has led to a distinct pattern of investment,
which is intimately connected with governance reforms underpinned by
a diverse set of public and private alliances at different levels. The article
traces these alliances which have given rise to community development
programmes. However, these programmes are underpinned by a drive
towards greater intensification of production through the use of inputs
supported by credit, which threatens to entangle farmers in debt and
lock them into the poverty inherent in the cocoa industry.
Introduction
Financialization is often associated with the rise of speculative investments
in global markets. This article seeks to draw attention to a different facet of
capitalist investment. Namely, the financial models that have shaped the
rise of a market in community services which have integrated farming
*Address for correspondence: Kojo S, Amanor, Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon,
Ghana; email: ksamanor@ug.edu.gh/kojoamanor@gmail.com
Community Development Journal Vol 56 No 1 2021 pp. 59–78 59
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60 Kojo S. Amanor
communities into transnational corporation (TNC)-led agribusiness. It
argues that these developments are closely tied up with the market liberal
reforms of the 1970s and the expansion of global markets, which presented
new opportunities for TNCs to dominate markets through takeovers
and mergers. This has resulted in the increasing influence of private
corporations over development policy. This has been achieved through
the establishment of strategic alliances between TNCs, states, international
financial institutions (IFIs) and civil society organizations. These alliances
promote agribusiness, and through this, increase the control of TNCs over
food value chains.
This article examines recent changes in the cocoa food systems within
West Africa, the investments of financial institutions in these transforma-
tions, and the impact of these investments on rural communities. This is
traced through a case study of the West African cocoa sector, focusing on
the two largest cocoa-producing countries in the world, Côte d’Ivoire and
Ghana. Although TNCs and IFIs have exerted a major influence in shaping
current production trajectories, cocoa production continues to be dominated
by smallholders, high levels of poverty, and low absorption of value by
these smallholder farmers. This study draws upon a large number of reports
and websites of development agencies, private corporations, and financial
institutions to analyse these developments.
The first section of this paper examines the concept of financialization
in relation to food systems in Africa. The second part traces the origins
of financial investment within Africa, its relationship with international
development, and the logic of its expansion from the 1980s when liberal
economic reformswere first implemented. The third section examines TNCs
in the cocoa sector in West Africa, and their takeover of the industry with
the aid of international donors and IFIs. The fourth section examines the
strategic alliances and platforms that have been establishedwithin the cocoa
sector to facilitate corporate control of the food chain, and the incorporation
of farmers into globalmarkets. It traces the relationships that have been built
between agricultural and financial services to farmers, which are articulated
as community development initiatives.
Framing financialization in relation to African agriculture
Financialization refers to a theory of capitalist transformation that demon-
strates how dominant investments now occur in the financial sector,
generating profits in future interest, dividends, capital gains, and rents,
rather than through the activities involved in production and trade in
commodities (Krippner, 2011). This has led to notions that the productive
sector of the capitalist economy has been captured by financial interests and
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West African cocoa 61
is now dominated by rentier interests (Blakeley, 2019). In the context of the
food sector, it has been argued that financialization and turmoil in financial
markets since 2006 has encouraged investors tomove into food commodities
and agricultural derivatives, resulting in financial speculations influencing
food prices, such as in the 2006–2008 world food crisis (Clapp andHelleiner,
2012; Clapp, 2014). In addition, financial investors have been identified
as instrumental in driving global farmland acquisitions and fuelling
land grabbing in developing countries (Cotula and Vermeulen, 2009;
Fairhead et al., 2012; Clapp, 2014).
In contrast, this paper focuses on the production process and the cor-
porate food system. It argues that transnational food traders and food
producer corporations continue to be dominated primarily by production
and marketing concerns. Rabinovich (2019) makes a similar point, arguing
that financial investments comprise only a small percentage of the total
investment portfolios of the main corporations involved in production and
trade, in which only 2.5 percent of the income of US non-financial corpora-
tions currently derives from financial investments. Rabinovich (2019) argues
that although there has been a significant growth of mergers and takeovers
since the 1990s on a global scale, this has largely arisen from concerns about
gaining access to the latest technology, innovation, product strategy, and
marketing, rather than the pursuit of financial investments and marketable
assets. Kumar (2020) argues in relation to textile production in Asia and
Honduras that TNCs draw upon financial services to enhance control over
production and marketing, and not primarily to extract financial interests
and rents.
Financial investments, economic restructuring, and
development policy
During the 1970s there was a surplus of capital in western banks. This
was a result of the investment of large revenues from oil-rich Middle
Eastern countries in western banks and the downturn in the profitability of
manufacturing in the United States andWestern Europe, which created less
demand for capital. The availability of cheap capital resulted in large-scale
borrowing byAfrican countries. By the 1980s, this had changed as theUnited
States sought to address its economic crisis by reflating its economy through
increases in borrowing, resulting in deficits of over US$900 billion by the late
1990s. This in effect meant the outflows of capital from industrial nations
to the rest of the world transformed into inflows of around US$350 billion
by the late 1980s (Arrighi, 2002). The scarcity of capital resulted in high
interest payments that rapidly became a debt crisis for African countries.
By the early 1980s, the aggregate debt of African countries lay at more than
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62 Kojo S. Amanor
US$600 billion, of which 34 percent was held by the largest nine banks in the
United States (Bracking, 2009).
As a consequence of these huge liabilities, African governments found it
difficult to gain further international loans, which resulted in them seeking
relief from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The donors needed
to re-establish creditworthiness and encouraged international financers to
continue to invest. They sought to do this through structural adjustment,
that is, market reforms that would open the economy to international capital
on favourable terms.
Beyond this, the donors needed international financers to take up the task
of promoting foreign investment by creating country platforms that would
provide investors with assurances. Country platforms are coordinating
bodies set upwith official government recognition that enable governments,
financiers, private corporations, and other partners to establish develop-
ment priorities and the mechanisms to implement them. In the early period
of structural adjustment, financial institutions, originally set up to build pri-
vate investment in Africa from the colonial period, took up the initiative of
building country platforms for investment, around which smaller corporate
investors could congregate, sheltered from risks anduncertainties (Bracking,
2009). The two most prominent were the International Finance Corporation
(IFC) of the World Bank Group, and the Commonwealth Development
Corporation (CDC) of the United Kingdom.
The Commonwealth Development Corporation
The CDC was originally founded in 1947 as the Colonial Development
Corporation, a statutory body promoting private commercial investments
to showcase the viability of commercial agriculture in British colonies
(Cowen, 1984). Following decolonization, it continued to finance devel-
opment projects, provide contractual management services to independent
states, and invest in private equity corporations. During the 1960s to the
1980s it largely focused on providing financial and managerial support
for smallholder agriculture. With the economic crisis of the 1980s and
introduction of economic restructuring measures in developing countries,
the CDC began to organize country-level funds, which involved pooling
investments from a number of corporations to reduce the risk of single
investments, and facilitating private equity investments (Bracking, 2009).
As CDC investments became increasingly profitable during the 1990s it
transformed itself into a public limited company.
Several parts of the CDC’s business have been privatized, including
Actis, a fund management company focusing on private equity in emerg-
ing markets and Aeries, a venture capital fund focusing on agribusiness
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West African cocoa 63
(Bracking, 2009). CDC’s forays into the world of private equity have led to
accusations that its funding is motivated by financial interest rather than
addressing poverty, evident for example, in its use of tax havens, and in
investments such as shopping malls in Africa, private medical facilities in
India, and in projects that appropriate the lands of smallholders (Northam
2008; War On Want, 2016).
The International Finance Corporation
The IFC emerged from within the World Bank Group in 1955 to encour-
age private sector investment within developing countries. The IFC has
spearheaded public and private sector cooperation in development. Its
investments have rapidly expanded and it now accounts for over one-third
of theWorld Bank’s US$67 billion annual commitments (Dreher et al., 2019).
The IFC came to prominence under structural adjustment where it was able
to provide funds for private sector investments in what were perceived as
risky environments and to organize country-level funds when other sources
of funding had dried up. While its official mandate is to ‘end extreme
poverty and promote shared prosperity’ (Dreher et al., 2019, p. 242), the
IFC frequently facilitates investments like luxury hotels, which promote the
interests of wealthy investors rather than addressing poverty (Malik and
Stone, 2018; Dreher et al., 2019).
Country-level funds, private equity capital, and NGOs
The CDC and IFC have been instrumental in the emergence of country-level
funds that encourage public–private partnerships, and networking between
various investors and donors. This networking has led to a close relationship
between investments, economic restructuring, policy conditionalities, and
governance reforms. It has also enabled civil society organizations to play a
role in the social transformations and initiatives at the community level.
In Ghana, for example, private equity became established in the early
1990s when United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
and theCDC sponsored theGhanaVenture Capital Fund (GVCF) to invest in
private sector companies, with operational capital of US$1 million provided
through USAID grants and an anchor investment of US$2 million provided
by CDC Capital Group (World Bank, 2016). The Venture Capital Fund
Management Company (VCFMC) was set up to manage the fund and was
later acquired byAureos Capital, a joint venture between CDC andNorfund
(a Norwegian state-owned investment fund). The GVCF initially supported
investments in private companies in the food processing and service sec-
tors (World Bank, 2016). In 2004, the structure of venture capital became
more strongly embedded in the national economy when the Ghanaian
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64 Kojo S. Amanor
government created the Venture Capital Trust Fund to promote local invest-
ments in venture funds and build up local capacities in private equity
investments. While there has subsequently been a significant expansion in
private equity funds, most of this has come from regional and pan-African
funds supported by international investors (World Bank, 2016). The main
investors in venture capital in Ghana include international development-
focused agencies such as CDC, IFC, the European Investment Bank, and
AfricanDevelopment Bank institutional investors such as Public Investment
Corporation of South Africa, Crédit Coopérative, Africa Sugar Industries
Pension Fund of Mauritius, and Wendel; national level investors such as
Agricultural Development Bank, SIC Insurance Company, and SSNIT; and
foundations, including the Gates Foundation, Alliance for a Green Revo-
lution in Africa, and the Soros Economic Development Fund (World Bank,
2016).
Several NGOs have also played important roles by introducing financial
services into rural areas and organizing contractual arrangements between
agribusiness and farmers, including the US NGO, Technoserve, Care Inter-
national and national NGOs, such as the Association of Church Develop-
ment Projects (ACDEP)which has established a commercial business service
for small farmers, the Savanna FarmersMarketing Company (Amanor, 2011;
Guyver and McCarthy, 2011).
The nature of the economic crises in Africa during the 1980s and the
economic restructuring measures that aimed to attract foreign investments
have effectively embedded financial services within the structure of gover-
nance reforms and development policy, which promote international capital
investments and public–private partnerships. The next section analyses the
growth of TNCs within the cocoa sector during the 1990s and their capture
of West African markets.
Transnational investments in cocoa
Cocoa is one of themost important export crops inWestAfrica, and central to
the national economies of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, which together produce
over 60 percent of world cocoa. In Ghana, cocoa has been under the state
control of the Cocoa Marketing Board, which continues to control the mar-
keting of Ghanaian cocoa on international markets. In Côte d’Ivoire, before
liberalization the Caisse de stabilisation allocated licences to private buyers,
set quotas prices, and the profits of exporters above which the government
extracted surpluses for its provision of services. After liberalization, cocoa
marketing in Côte d’Ivoire is largely undertaken by TNCs.
With the introduction of IMF restructuring during the 1980s, one of the
central concerns of the IFIs and bilateral donors was to open up cocoa
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West African cocoa 65
marketing to private control by TNCs (Fold, 2002; Losch, 2002). The pres-
sures to liberalize cocoa occurred during a period of major global restructur-
ing within the cocoa industry. By the early 2000s, three transnational food
traders—Barré Callebaut, Cargill, and Archer Daniel Midland (ADM)1—
came to control over 60 percent of total global grinding capacity through
acquisitions and investments in new technology (Losch, 2002; Fold, 2002;
Terazono, 2014).
Both Ghanaian and Ivorian governments resisted this, since they were
highly dependent upon cocoa exports for generating state revenues. In
Ghana, the state acquiesced to divesting the internal marketing of cocoa
to licensed buyers, but insisted on retaining control over the export trade
(Losch, 2002; Lavin, 2007). Although the marketing of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire
lay in the hands of private companies, the government feared that the
opening up of these to acquisition would undermine its influence over the
marketing system and the revenues that derived from it.2 A highly volatile
international market and declining international cocoa prices during the
late 1990s, associated with the creation of large buffer stocks and future
trading, forced the Ivorian government into a series of desperatemeasures to
contain the downward fall in international cocoa prices (Losch, 2002). This
only exacerbated the crisis and delivered a bankrupt government into the
hands of the IMF. The restructuring imposed on the Côte d’Ivoire effectively
opened up the cocoa industry to TNC domination (Crook, 1990; Losch,
2002).
The economic pressures to open up Ivorian cocoa to takeover by TNCs
and the ensuing economic crisis have had a considerable social toll on the
Ivorian economy. It resulted in the disentangling of the finely balanced social
contract within the Ivorian state that defined the roles of labour migrants,
capitalist farmers, landowners, trading corporations, and social redistribu-
tion by the state (Chauveau, 2000, 2009; Dozon, 2000; Losch, 2000; Kouame,
2010). The crisis led to increasing impoverishment among farmers. As a
consequence, many of the wealthier farmers exited from cocoa production,
leaving small migrant farmers from Sahelian countries as the dominant
farmers, operating on very small margins (Léonard and Oswald, 1997; Ruf,
2001). This exacerbated ethnic tensions and xenophobia against Sahelian
migrants, who were blamed for the economic crisis of cocoa by political
elites, eventually escalating into a civil war (Losch, 2000).
1 ADM’s cocoa business was subsequently acquired by Olam International of (Singapore) in 2015. See
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cocoa-olam-intl-archer-daniels-idUSKCN0SA24Y20151016.
2 For instance, Losch (2002) reports that the Ivorian state attempted to prevent Cargill acquiring
subsidiary companies throughout the 1990s.
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66 Kojo S. Amanor
As a result of the civil war, the cocoa TNCs temporarily relocated their
headquarters to Ghana, where they began establishing processing facilities
in export free zones. These developments have eased pressure on theGhana-
ian state to liberalize the international marketing of cocoa. It resulted in a
much greater emphasis on public–private partnership, in which the TNCs
extend their control over the cocoa sector through state marketing, and the
state plays an important role in the establishment of TNC governance over
the cocoa value chain (Kolavalli and Vigneri, 2017).
TNCs operating in the West African cocoa sector are some of the largest
food traders in the world. Cargill, for instance, is the world’s largest private
food trader in agricultural commodities. It has built up a highly diversified
portfolio through acquisitions, which have included investments in cere-
als, livestock, livestock feed, aquaculture, fertilizers, and farmland. It has
subsidiaries in more than 60 countries. In 2003, it established a hedge
management scheme Black River Assets Management Fund (BRAMF), with
assets of over US$5 billion. In 2010, BRAMF established two private equity
schemes each with between US$300 and 400 million to invest in global food
and farmland assets, and aquaculture. In 2011, it sold off its assets in Mosaic
fertilizer company for US$24 billion (Amanor, 2012). In an interview in
September 2018, David MacLennan, CEO of Cargill revealed his company’s
investment strategy:
We don’t make big, big acquisitions, but if it’s strategically accretive, it’s
something that we think can fit very quickly and it’s in one of our areas
that is consistent with our strategy, we’ll be comfortable making those
acquisitions (Parker and Steel, 2018).
MacLennan also revealed that Cargill acquired technical competency in
new sectors through acquisitions, as it has done in the cocoa sector (Parker
and Steel, 2018). Cargill, as other food traders in the cocoa sector, also
builds its influence through strategic partnerships with other TNCs, finan-
cial companies, and service providers. In Côte d’Ivoire, the Cargill Cop
Academy, an educational programme for managers of cocoa cooperatives,
is financed by the IFC and other international donors. By building strategic
alliances with the support of IFIs, cocoa TNCs are able to embed their
strategies for accumulation within national governance and development
infrastructures for the cocoa sector. The next section examines the strategic
alliances, platforms, and engagements initiated by TNCs to build up their
control of cocoa production and the ramifications of these on community
development initiatives.
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West African cocoa 67
Strategic alliances and platforms within the cocoa sector
The development of new processing technologies has facilitated concentra-
tion within the cocoa industry. However, this has not been translated into a
rapid expansion of production to meet the increasing demand for cocoa and
chocolate products on the world market. On the contrary, there are dangers
of decreasing production as farmers convert to other crops as a result of the
increasing cost of cocoa production and declining profit margins to farmers,
which has beenmost evident in Brazil, Indonesia, andMalaysia, where there
has been a marked decline in cocoa production since the 1990s (Ruf, 1995).
These trends have resulted in a focus in the cocoa industry on increasing the
productivity of cocoa to enable production targets to be realized by smaller
numbers of highly productive farmers investing in inputs.
Cocoa is a frontier crop. It thrives in newly opened up forested areas
in which it provides a bountiful crop for low expenditure on inputs and
labour (Ruf, 1995). But as cocoa production becomes established, these
advantages disappear. Cocoa becomes vulnerable to pests and diseases, and
yields decline as soil fertility decreases. Historically, cocoa production has
constantly shifted to new forested frontier areas, leaving behind declining
older areas in which farmers struggle to produce cocoa competitively and
convert to other crops (Amanor, 1994; Ruf, 1995). In the early twentieth
century, cocoa production shifted from Central America into West Africa,
where the Gold Coast became the dominant world producer in the 1920s.
By the early 1950s, the older areas of production in the south-eastern forests
of the Gold Coast began to experience swollen shoot disease and the major
centres of production shifted into the Ashanti and Western Regions. By the
1970s, new frontier land inGhana disappeared and the cocoa frontiermoved
into the Côte d’Ivoire (Amanor, 2011). By the 1990s, new frontier had largely
disappeared in Côte d’Ivoire and farmers were faced with the high costs of
rehabilitating old plantation.
With the decline of forests, the cocoa industry has focused on the planting
of hybrid varieties, which are bred to be tolerant of drier conditions and
to be higher yielding, but depend upon application of large amounts of
fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides. The costs of inputs, declining yields,
and declining profits have resulted in a movement towards more intensive
production on smaller areas of land. Wealthier farmers with other economic
options have sometimes abandoned cocoa (Léonard and Oswald, 1997; Ruf,
2001; Yao and Fiko, 2015). In the late 1990s, as world market prices for cocoa
collapsed, the dominant social group in cocoa production in Côte d’Ivoire
became small migrant farmers from Burkina Faso who operated on the
smallest of margins. This increasing impoverishment of cocoa farmers led
to allegations in the western media that cocoa farmers relied on exploitative
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68 Kojo S. Amanor
child labour, giving rise to demands for governments and corporations to
address child labour issues (Off, 2006; Amanor, 2011). While demands for
ethical codes on child labour were not necessarily welcomed by TNCs, the
effect has been to make West African governments increasingly dependent
upon the skills of TNCs in negotiating standards and in positive commodity
branding, which has enabled the most powerful companies to gain greater
control over cocoa markets through imposing standards and certification
(Cocoa and Forest Initiative, 2018; Odijie, 2018).
Although the initial ethical concerns revolved around child labour, sus-
tainable production and deforestation have become pressing recent issues. A
major concern of the TNCs has been to address moral discourses about the
environmental unsustainability of cocoa, its destruction of natural forests,
and the impoverishment of farmers. To achieve this, the large companies
have come together to create strategic alliances and platforms that encom-
pass public–private partnerships and civil society participation to promote
sustainable development and community development. However, the cocoa
corporations are also intent on redefining these ethical concerns as technical
issues, in which sustainable development can be addressed by boosting
production and productivity, by introducing new technologies to farmers
and financial support systems to facilitate the uptake of technology. These
platforms seek to build a broad base of support among various organizations
involved in rural development, including those that provide agricultural
and financial services for farmers (Cargill, 2015; Cocoa and Forest Initiative,
2018; IFC, 2019).
Platforms and community development
The earliest cocoa platform was the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI),
which was established in 2002. This brought together the major cocoa
corporations to address child labour issues within cocoa production. It later
expanded its work to address issues of education, health, water, sanitation,
gender inequalities, rural livelihoods, and poverty (Nestlé, 2017). It thus
refashioned cocoa corporations as initiators of community development in
development discourses.
The largest TNCs used their experience gained with the ICI to fashion
their own independent cocoa schemes, such as the Nestlé Cocoa Plan and
Cargill Cocoa Promise programmes. They repositioned child exploitative
labour as rural poverty and addressed poverty as a technical (rather
than socio-political) issue. Thus, Nestlé promotes its ‘three pillars of
activities’:
better farming, better lives, and better cocoa. We train farmers in bet-
ter agricultural practices, distribute higher yielding cocoa trees, promote
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West African cocoa 69
gender equality, address the child labour issue, and develop long-term
relationships with farmer groups (Nestlé, 2017, p. 7).
Similarly, Cargill (2015, p. C3) presents a vision of its Cocoa Promise
programme supporting enterprising farmers whose professionalism con-
tributes to community development:
farmers will become empowered entrepreneurs who manage professional
farms that generate a living income or beyond. They will maximize the
profitability of their cocoa farms by optimizing cocoa production and
using inputs efficiently and in an environmentally sustainable manner
. . . To reach their full potential, and to also contribute to the community
and the environment, farmers have to be part of a thriving community.
These communities improve quality of life today, and enable a bright
tomorrow. By participating in theCargill Cocoa Promise, communitieswill
acquire better social services related to education, health, and nutrition.
Community members will unite to protect children from child labour and
empower women. Partnerships with farmer organizations are key. They
enable us to reach many smallholders. Experience shows us that help-
ing these organizations build their capacity provides a solid foundation
and engagement for farmer training, farm development, and community
support activities.
These subtle shifts in discourse in effect transform the publicly stated main
objective of these companies, from the accumulation of profits, raising the
productivity of cocoa, and securing a stable supply of production, into
community development (Odijie, 2018).
Cocoa TNCs have been able to shift the main thrust of sustainable
development initiatives into an agenda for intensification of cocoa, enabling
‘more cocoa to be grown on less land’ (IDH, 2020). CocoaAction is the largest
platform within the cocoa sector dealing with sustainable development. It
was initiated in 2014 by the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) to bring all the
major cocoa processors and chocolate manufacturers together to build an
economically viable and sustainable supply chain. CocoaAction builds up
strategic networks of a diversity of groups that can work to transform cocoa
production, including IFIs and bilateral donors, influential organizations
involved in environmental standards and certification such as Fairtrade,
Rainforest Alliance, and UTZ, and international conservation NGOs (World
Cocoa Foundation, 2015).
Cargill has also supported the formation of a Land Use and Forestry Pro-
tection Advisory Panel with representation from prominent international
environmental NGOs including Tropical Forest Alliance, Conservation
International, Rainforest Alliance, and World Resource Institute (Cargill,
2019). The WCF has also launched the Cocoa and Forests Initiative (CFI)
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70 Kojo S. Amanor
with the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH)3. The main objectives of CFI are
to promote the intensification of cocoa production to ameliorate the search
for new forest land by farmers, and to introduce traceability andmonitoring
systems to prevent encroachment of farmers into forest lands, so that it can
guarantee that cocoa within WCF supply chains are sustainably produced.
The CFI also works with researchers on cocoa agroforestry practices, and
in the process has shifted the main emphasis of research on cocoa agro-
forests from biodiversity concerns to the intensive use of inputs and hybrid
seedling with preservation of trees on cocoa farms to increase yields (Ruf
and Schroth, 2004; Gockowski and Sonwa, 2011). This reifies the objective
of presenting sustainability as the intensification of production using more
inputs to minimize expansion into new land. In Ghana, the WCF works
with the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana, the African Cocoa Breeders
Group, Kookoopa (a farmer’s association), and Biodiversity International
on a programme supported by the Dutch government to develop higher
yielding cocoa varieties and promote commercial nurseries in rural commu-
nities to disseminate new planting materials and techniques (World Cocoa
Foundation, 2019). Similarly, in Côte d’Ivoire, Nestlé and Mars work with
ICRAF on on-farm trials to test new clone and hybrid varieties (World Cocoa
Foundation, 2019).
These initiatives have developed strategic alliances with some of the
largest global input and fertilizer corporations, who also seek to shift the
main sustainable development narratives towards more intensive produc-
tion. Cargill and Syngenta (one of the big four seed and agricultural input
producing corporations in the world) have initiated a partnership that has
enabled Cargill to establish the largest crop protection programme in Côte
d’Ivoire without additional investments, and Syngenta, to gain newmarkets
for its products (Sustainable Trade Initiative, 2017). InGhana, RMGConcept,
a subsidiary of Syngenta, has acquired the agrochemical components of
Wienco, a Dutch–Ghanaian corporation, which is the largest input dealer in
internal Ghanaian trade. This also gives RMG Concept access to the Cocoa
Abrapa farmers’ association, whichWienco set up with Yara (one of the two
largest fertilizer producers in the world) to provide credits and inputs to
farmers within the associations (Ghana Graphic Online, 2016).
These linkages, with input distributors, serve several strategic objectives.
Downstream, it facilitates the incorporation of farmers into input markets,
which when combined with the distribution of cocoa seedlings provides
an infrastructure for more intensive production. Upstream, these input
3 IDH is a Dutch government supported financial organization that seeks to build coalitions between
TNCS, civil society organizations and government agencies in commodity value chains. See https://www.i
dhsustainabletrade.com/about-idh/.
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West African cocoa 71
companies also have high-level linkages into global forums on sustain-
able development and have also been able to influence policy delibera-
tions towards defining sustainability by organizing several civil society
lobby groups. For instance, Yara and Mosaic fertilizer company (which was
acquired by Cargill but sold off in 2011 for US$24 billion) are represented
on the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture with other fertilizer
lobby groups, where they have vociferously campaigned for an approach
to climate change based on more intensive use of fertilizers and synthetic
inputs (GRAIN, 2015).
Downstream, agribusiness linkages into community mobilization initia-
tives are often supported by equity capital. For instance the African Agri-
culture Trade Investment Fund (AATIF)—a fund promoting public–private
partnerships, which has been capitalized by Deutche Bank and the German
Development Bank (KfW), CDC, and Enco Africa Private Equity Fund,
among others—has funded Wienco’s farmer initiatives.4 Civil society link-
ages to promote community uptake of new technologies also link into the
world of microfinance. Microfinance corporations, including Advans and
Opportunity International Savings and Loans (OISL), manage the provision
of loans to farmer associations. These work in partnership with foundations
such as Gates and Mastercard, with mobile phone operators such as MTN,
and with international NGOs such as Technoserve, to develop credit and
digital credit facilities to enable greater farmer acquisition of inputs. The
IFC (2019, p. 62) states: ‘Giving the farmers access to financial services will
increase traceability and the farmers’ loyalty . . . . Digital payments offer a
pathway for access to formal credit as a digital footprint is created.’
In the Côte d’Ivoire, Advans works with MTN to provide 14,000 farmers
organized in 90 cooperatives withmobilemoney accounts (IFC, 2019). These
services are integrated into the dense web of national financial services
and banks, foundations, and pan-African venture capital funds, which have
developed a keen interest in agribusiness. Their programmes are often
underwritten by large financial providers, including IFC, CDC, and IDH
(World Bank, 2016). For instance, in 2016, Advans had an agreement to
provide 100,000 cocoa farmers with loans with a risk sharing agreement of
US$9 million underwritten by IFC and IDH (Barry Callebaut, 2016).
These financial services build upon a long history of loan provision for
farmers to foster adoption of new technology. This was implemented on a
national scale inGhana through theGlobal 2000 programmeof the Sasakawa
and Jimmy Carter Foundations in the 1990s (Amanor, 2010). In the early
4 See https://www.cdcgroup.com/en/our-investments/fund/atlantic-coast-regional-fund/; https://www.
cdcgroup.com/en/our-investments/underlying/rmg-concept-limited/; and https://www.aatif.lu/objective-
of-the-fund.html (all accessed on October 3rd 2019).
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72 Kojo S. Amanor
2000s, the Ghanaian government sought to promote national agribusiness
by encouraging linkages between food processors, and banks to release
credit for farmer acquisition of inputs. For instance, on the Afife rice irri-
gation project, linkages were created between the Ministry of Food and
Agriculture, Research Institutions, and Wienco to provide recommended
packages of seed and inputs to farmers. TheAgricultural Development Bank
(ADB) provided loans to farmers, which were collected by the House of
Remma, a Ghanaian processing company that was also financed by ADB.
The farmers were bound by the contract to pay their loans in rice to the
House of Remma, which then repaid the ADB (Danson et al., 2004).
Through arrangements with microfinance and African equity capital, the
cocoa TNCs are able to capitalize on the existing structures of accumulation
and organizational knowledge within venture capital and apply it to the
development of their own value chains. They are also able to draw upon
the state to provide services to farmers, particularly in Ghana where the
state has a large stake in the international marketing of cocoa and in research
services. Since the early 2000s, the Ghanaian state has been spending consid-
erable resources in subsidizing inputs for farmers, in spraying campaigns
against disease, and in providing free hybrid seedlings to farmers. As a
consequence, the state is also interested in mobilizing financial capital to
reduce this growing burden.
These interventions in production have not been a resounding success
story. The data on uptake of new technology and productivity gains among
farmers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire show mixed results. The average yield
of around 500 kg of cocoa per ha in both countries is relatively low com-
pared with the potential to raise yields to 1000 kg per ha. There is also
considerable variation in yields in Ghana from around 300–1000 kg per ha
reflecting various levels of use of inputs, environmental and soil conditions
(Hainmueller et al., 2011; Ruf and Bini, 2011; Wessel and Quist-Wessel, 2015;
Kolavalli and Vigneri, 2017). The subsidization of inputs by the Government
of Ghana has enabled more farmers to adopt inputs, in contrast with Côte
d’Ivoire where high costs of fertilizers make them a riskier investment for
farmers. However, as Odijie (2019) points out, this has resulted in a huge
expenditure for theGhanaian state, which in 2018 incurred expenses of US$2
billion in subsidizing inputs for cocoa farmers, absorbing a substantial part
of the revenues that the government gains from cocoa exports.
These interventions and subsidies have not resulted in significant
improvement in cocoa revenues for farmers or for the cocoa producing
nations. According to Fairtrade International (2018, p. 3):
For several years now, a growing consensus has emerged across the
industry that it is fundamentally unfair, as well as unsustainable, that
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West African cocoa 73
most cocoa farmers earn less than a living income. Despite many different
initiatives to improve the conditions for cocoa farmers in West Africa,
which often focus on productivity and increasing yields, the situation has
not improved enough.
Fairtrade International (2018, p. 3) estimates that only 12 percent of cocoa
farmers in Côte d’Ivoire receive a living income, estimated at above the
equivalent of US$2.5 per day. Fountain and Huetz-Adam (2015) suggest
that over 60 percent of farmers in Côte d’Ivoire live below the poverty line.
They also estimate that only 6 percent of value within the cocoa food chains
ends up with farmers. The declining revenues of farmers reached a crisis in
June 2019 when both governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana threatened
to suspend sale of the 2020 crop unless buyers raised minimum prices to
US$2600 per ton. The two nations eventually lifted this suspension but
decided to implement a Living Income Differential, which they would pay
to farmers—the equivalent of US$400—when world market prices dropped
below US$2600 per ton (Africa Research Bulletin, 2019).
With declining prices for cocoa and increasing expenditure on inputs, a
significant number of farmers are turning towards other crops, including
rubber and oil palm (Ruf and Schroth, 2015; Odijie, 2018). The response
of the cocoa industry is to encourage farmers to increase productivity by
using more inputs and to build financial credit services to facilitate this.
This carries dangers of entrapping farmers in escalating debt and locking
them into a growing dependence on inputs and credit supplied at a profit to
agribusiness (Odijie, 2018). As accusations of poverty tarnish the industry,
the cocoa corporations may also attempt to increase barriers of entry to pro-
duction, and abandon smallholders who are unable to make this transition
to high inputs. Paradoxically, it is likely to be the smallholders who are
most affected, who are dependent upon cocoa and have fewer alternatives,
while larger farmers with more capital may have more opportunities to
convert to other crops. While these cocoa platforms have created an image
of an industry that is committed to promoting community development and
investments in the community, they have been less successful in transform-
ing the poverty and structural inequality that is embedded in the very nature
of its production and surplus extraction.
Conclusion
This paper questions perceptions that in recent years financialization is
displacing productive capital and resulting in new forms of investments
that undermine the productive sector. In contrast, I have argued that, in the
context of West Africa, there are close synergic linkages between financial-
ization andproductive capital. In theWestAfrican cocoa industry this occurs
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74 Kojo S. Amanor
in four distinct venues. Firstly, in the structures of governance reforms and
development policy formulation that sought to open up African economies
to foreign investment. These created ‘national platforms’ to attract foreign
capital and kick-start venture capital investments in Africa. They facilitated
the public–private partnerships and civil society linkages that have very
much defined the ways in which cocoa TNCs have invested in West Africa
and built strategic linkages into community development. Secondly, the
abandonment of antitrust legislation enforcement and promotion of open
global markets that were initiated in the United States from the 1970s
have enabled the global expansion of transnational food traders through
acquisitions andmergers and their recourse to international financial capital
to realize these acquisitions. These acquisitions have beendominated bypro-
ductive concerns of capturing new technology and specialized knowledge to
achieve market domination rather than in speculative investment in liquid
assets. Thirdly, cocoa TNCs have invested in building strategic linkageswith
input suppliers who have also gained control over input markets through
acquisitions of corporations with economic and organizational linkages to
farmer associations. Fourthly, there have been downstream linkages into
national financial markets established by dense webs of international and
pan-African venture and equity capital, which also have links to national
stock exchanges, development banks, digital monetary services, and micro-
finance—all of which see agribusiness as a lucrative field for investment.
These initiatives have resulted in a complex web of productive and financial
capital and civil society organizations working to develop cocoa supply
chains integratedwith transnational food traders and input suppliers.While
the cocoa platforms present their interventions as making a significant
impact on community development and poverty alleviation, large numbers
of farmers in the cocoa value chain suffer from impoverishment and receive
a very small percentage of the value generated in production andmarketing
Kojo Amanor is a professor at the Institute of African Studies University, Legon, Ghana. He
mainly works on agrarian and natural resource issues in Africa, including the land questions,
the ramifications of development policies on smallholder agriculture and the expansion of
agribusiness.
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