ECOWAS member countries account for 68% of global cocoa supply, and have rightly felt that their revenue compared to the chocolate companies was not representative of the value they contributed.
In fact, as the chart below shows, they capture just 3% of the total revenue. It is necessary to look beyond the headline figure and take into account the costs chocolate companies have. In fact it is the gross profit figure we should be concerned with, rather than the total revenue.
From shipping, processing, research and development, packaging and marketing. The costs are considerable, but the problem is they are not easily untangled from the companies other business operations, so it’s hard to know exactly what the profits made are.
But we do know that chocolate companies made $22bn and it’s understandable to wonder if the revenue split between the chocolate companies and the source of their raw materials, namely ECOWAS members, is fair.
In July 2019 Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire agreed with traders to apply a $400 per tonne premium to the price of cocoa to present a fair living wage for their farmers. Some insiders saw this as insufficient, however when multiplied against production levels it means that an additional $1.2bn of revenue to Cote d’Ivoire.