More than a third of Ghana's 2023/24 cocoa production has been lost to smuggling, revealed a senior official from Cocobod during an interview with Reuters. Payment delays and lower local prices have driven some farmers to sell to increasingly advanced trafficking networks.

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With poor harvests in both Ghana and Ivory Coast—leading cocoa producers globally—the market is now facing a four-year supply shortfall, causing cocoa and chocolate prices to surge this year.

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Ivory Coast and Togo offer higher prices for cocoa due to a stable CFA franc and fewer regulations compared to Ghana.

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By June’s end, Ghana's cocoa production had reached only 429,323 metric tons, amounting to less than 55% of the usual output at this stage, signaling the largest drop in over two decades.

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Charles Amenyaglo, head of special services at Cocobod and leader of the anti-smuggling task force, stated that smuggling-related losses surged more than threefold in the 2023/24 season.

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"Conservatively, I will say we lost 160,000 tons," he said, adding that the task force also intercepted about 250 tons, up from 17 tons in 2022/23.

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"The data is alarming," said Abubakar Omae, general secretary of Ghana's cocoa and coffee farmers association.

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While more than 10 people have been sentenced to between three months and 10 years in prison for smuggling this year, Amenyaglo said Ghana's military will soon be deployed to tackle smugglers.

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Smuggling rings, which offer farmers higher prices, began to take hold in 2022, when Ghana was at the height of an economic and currency crisis.

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Amenyaglo said significant quantities of cocoa were crossing into Togo, Burkina Faso and even Mali.

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"We've seen cocoa in tipper trucks covered by quarry chippings and in drums disguised as palm oil," he said. "We've seen pontoon boats carting cocoa...but the shocker is when we saw a fuel tanker loaded with cocoa. The 'Don't tamper' seal was still on."

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Cocobod has failed to pay for beans on time during the season due to problems with the syndicated loan it uses to finance purchases.

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"This comes back to (the) money issue ... If we're liquid and actively on the field, smuggling can be curtailed," said Samuel Adimado, president of the Ghanaian cocoa buyers' group.

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Ghana began the 2024/25 season ahead of schedule, introducing a new funding model and raising the farmgate price by 45%.

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Farmers are optimistic that these changes will reduce smuggling, but they worry that a depreciating currency might diminish the benefits of the price increase.

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"We've invested a lot to raise cocoa production in Ghana, not for cocoa sectors in Togo or Ivory Coast to blossom," Amenyaglo said.

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