By Lord Fiifi Quayle
The recent decline in global cocoa prices has renewed pressure on farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast. Revenues tighten, stabilization funds strain, and familiar anxieties resurface.
But commodity downturns reveal more than vulnerability, they reveal structural weaknesses. This is precisely the argument I make in my book, Pricing Uncertainty, where I show that economic instability often stems not from market cycles alone, but from the way institutions transmit and manage risk.
For decades, cocoa governance led by institutions such as the Ghana Cocoa Board has relied on forward selling, centralized marketing, and fixed seasonal farm-gate pricing. These mechanisms were designed for stability. Yet in today’s financialized and climate-affected global market, concentrating risk at the state level has become increasingly costly.
Falling prices reduce export earnings. Governments hesitate to adjust farm-gate prices. Stabilization buffers deplete. Risk is absorbed by the state rather than distributed along the value chain. As I explain in Pricing Uncertainty, such structural misalignment turns temporary market shocks into systemic stress.
This is why the proposal by President John Mahama at the African Union that Ghana and Africa process more cocoa locally and expand intra-African trade, is strategically significant. It recognizes that commodity dependence is not merely an agricultural issue; it is a structural economic constraint.
Processing cocoa domestically strengthens the cedi, retains margins, and builds industrial capacity. Exporting raw beans while importing finished chocolate externalizes value and internalizes vulnerability. Intra-African trade stabilizes demand and keeps economic gains within the continent.
But industrialization alone is not enough. Governance reform must accompany it. Farm-gate pricing should become benchmark-linked, transparent, and gradually adjustable. Stabilization funds must operate on actuarial principles, and cocoa revenues must be ring-fenced from quasi-fiscal pressures. These are all principles I outline in Pricing Uncertainty: uncertainty cannot be absorbed silently it must be priced, distributed, and managed strategically.
Most critically, Ghana and Ivory Coast, which dominate global supply, must coordinate both industrial strategy and pricing mechanisms. Fragmentation weakens leverage; alignment reshapes markets.
The President’s AU proposal opens the door to a continental cocoa reset. Pricing Uncertainty provides a blueprint for such a reset: disciplined pricing, industrial expansion, risk management, and regional coordination form the architecture needed to stabilize incomes, strengthen currencies, and capture value locally.
Cocoa is not merely an export crop. It is macroeconomic infrastructure. If Ghana integrates these reforms, we will not merely survive commodity cycles we will influence them.
Downturns are temporary. Architecture endures. Pricing Uncertainty explains how to design that architecture and Africa’s cocoa future depends on whether we act on it.
GHANA MUST WORK AGAIN
