African Cocoa Initiative to Benefit 100,000 Cocoa Farm Families
The World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), the U.S. Government’s Feed the Future initiative, and the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) officially launched the WCF African Cocoa Initiative (WCF/ACI) today in a ceremony co-hosted with the Ghana Cocoa Board and key African stakeholders, including regional government officials and NGO partners.
This Global Development Alliance partnership, supported by Feed the Future through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will improve cocoa farmer incomes, alleviate poverty, strengthen government and regional institutions, and advance food security in the cocoa-producing countries of Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. Over the five-year term, the program will train 100,000 cocoa farmers and support their improved well-beingand livelihoods.
More than 2 million smallholder cocoa farmers depend on cocoa for their livelihoods in West and Central Africa. One of the most critical issues in the cocoa industry is overcoming the productivity gap between the world’s supply and demand. WCF/ACI will develop the cocoa sector in four critical areas to address this issue, by fostering public-private cooperative investments in cocoa and agriculture, improving the genetic quality and productivity of the cocoa varieties under cultivation, expanding farmer education and training programs, and improving the agriculture input supply chains that serve the farmers.