Presidents John Dramani Mahama and Alassane Ouattara have signed a joint declaration committing Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire to align how they price cocoa for farmers, a move the two governments say will plug a smuggling loophole that has drained revenue from both economies for years.
The declaration was signed in Abidjan on Tuesday, June 16, 2026, at the close of a high-level summit on the future of the cocoa economy, building on commitments the two countries first made under the 2018 Abidjan Declaration. Together, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire account for roughly 60 percent of global cocoa output, a dominance both leaders said carries a shared responsibility to reshape how the sector functions and how its wealth is distributed.
The agreement followed the 7th Meeting of the Steering Committee of the Côte d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative, where Ghana’s Finance Minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, presented the committee’s conclusions. “The two countries agreed to harmonise farm gate prices through some measures,” he said, describing a package that includes closer coordination between trading rooms, expanded data-sharing, and a common crop year running from September 1 to August 31, starting with the 2026/2027 marketing season.
A technical task force drawn from experts in both countries will now design the actual price coordination framework and review producer prices periodically. Dr Forson said the steering committee “reaffirms its commitment to the long-term coordination of cocoa price management and marketing.” Beyond pricing, the two governments also pledged to push local processing further, with Ghana targeting at least 50 percent of its beans processed domestically from the 2026/27 season, and signalled openness to eventually extending the cocoa alliance to other African producing nations.
At the heart of the deal is a long-standing problem: when one country pays farmers more than the other, cocoa beans tend to slip across the border to chase the higher price, hollowing out export revenue, distorting production statistics and complicating planning for both regulators. That dynamic has been especially visible over the past year. Côte d’Ivoire cut its mid-crop producer price by 57 percent in March 2026 to roughly $2,110 a tonne as global benchmark prices tumbled, while Ghana held its own farmgate price steady at the equivalent of about $3,728 a tonne for its 2025/26 mid-crop season, a gap wide enough to tempt smugglers, even as global cocoa futures on the Intercontinental Exchange fell from around $8,000 a tonne last August to under $3,800 by mid-June.
The push for closer alignment comes against a backdrop of declining harvests in both countries. Ghana’s production has fallen sharply since 2020, from roughly 1.05 million tonnes in the 2020/2021 season to about 530,000 tonnes in 2023/2024, its lowest output in decades, as swollen shoot disease, ageing farms, illegal mining encroachment on cocoa land, smuggling and financing strain at its regulator, Cocobod, took their toll. Côte d’Ivoire’s output has also been volatile, slipping from about 2.25 million tonnes in 2020/2021 to roughly 1.67 million tonnes by 2023/2024, even as it has held onto its position as the world’s largest producer.
Despite weaker harvests, both countries have benefited from a sharp run-up in global prices in recent years. Ghana’s cocoa exports, including beans and processed products, climbed from about $1.94 billion in 2024 to roughly $3.86 billion in 2025, according to Bank of Ghana figures cited by local media, while Côte d’Ivoire’s export earnings, which stood at about $5.06 billion in 2021 before easing to $4.47 billion in 2022, continue to track the same price volatility.
The two governments first tried to address farmer pay through the Living Income Differential, a $400-per-tonne premium introduced in 2019. That mechanism delivered uneven results, as buyers often clawed back part of the premium through discounts elsewhere, leaving many farmers still facing low earnings, delayed payments and rising production costs.
For international buyers, chocolate makers, grinders and commodity traders in Europe, North America and Asia, a more tightly coordinated Ghana-Côte d’Ivoire pricing bloc could mean steadier, more predictable supply contracts. It would also narrow the price gaps that traders have sometimes used to their advantage, a trade-off the two governments are betting will ultimately pay off for their farmers if the new framework is enforced as planned.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah