According to official reports, Ghana has lost nearly one million tonnes of cocoa worth almost €1.1 billion to smuggling since 2021.

This is mainly due to the price difference between Ghana and its neighbouring countries, delayed payments, and an unstable currency. In October 2024, the price per tonne of cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire was 3,060 dollars, while in Ghana it stood at 3,039 dollars. The difference is not large, but it still contributed to cocoa being sold on the black market.

Ghana is making major efforts to curb smuggling. A rewards system is intended to give informants as well as anti-smuggling units one-third of the estimated value of seized cocoa as a reward. In the case of a seizure of almost two tonnes, this would have been around 1,800 dollars: the average annual income of a Ghanaian cocoa farmer is just under 2,300 dollars. In light of the current record prices — at the beginning of 2025, a tonne cost almost 11,000 dollars — smuggling has become even more lucrative. In Togo, for example, the cocoa price is adjusted twice a month to match the global price. Ghana’s cocoa board, however, sets the price once a year. This provides stability but also, as in the current situation, leads to financial losses for farmers — making smuggling profitable.

At the beginning of the season in August, Ghana announced a farmgate price of 5,040 dollars per tonne — but the average global price was 7,592 dollars per tonne. An association of around 300,000 cocoa farmers protested and threatened to participate in smuggling into neighbouring countries. Ghana’s Finance Minister, Cassiel Ato Forson, gave in and raised the farmgate price to 5,393 dollars per tonne.

Ghana’s cocoa board also supports farmers with free pesticides, flower inducers, and spraying machines. Since this year, it has again been distributing free fertiliser to cocoa farms. This measure had been implemented once before but was halted in 2020 because the free fertiliser had been smuggled out of the country and sold elsewhere.