KEY POINTS

• COCEFAAA wants an African cocoa producers’ bloc and a floor price of at least $6,000 a tonne.
• It says the bloc would end reliance on London and New York commodity exchanges.
• Africa supplies most cocoa but earns only about 6 percent of the $165bn chocolate value chain.

The Cocoa and Coffee Farmers Alliance Association of Africa has called for a unified African cocoa producers’ bloc and a minimum floor price of not less than $6,000 per metric tonne. According to the association, the measures would coordinate production and strengthen the bargaining power of farmers across the continent.

A push to control pricing

COCEFAAA said the bloc and floor price would help end Africa’s dependence on commodity exchanges in London and New York, which continue to influence global cocoa pricing. The Global President, Comrade Adeola Adegoke, made the call in a statement, while commending the 7th Steering Committee of the Cote d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative held in Abidjan as evidence of growing producer-led cooperation.

Moreover, he noted that Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, which together account for about 60 percent of global cocoa output, have shown that coordinated producer action can shape industry direction. Therefore, he urged the two countries to expand their bilateral arrangement into a wider continental framework that includes Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

A wider value-chain gap

Furthermore, Adegoke warned that Africa’s cocoa sector remains exposed to extreme price volatility driven by external markets. According to him, prices surged above $11,000 per tonne at their peak before easing sharply, and the swing fuels instability across producing countries.

He also pointed to a stark earnings gap. Despite supplying the bulk of global cocoa, Africa receives only about 6 percent of the estimated $165 billion chocolate value chain. Consequently, he argued that the imbalance reinforces the need for stronger collective bargaining and local control of pricing structures.

Ultimately, Adegoke framed the proposed bloc as a way to shift power back to the farmers who grow the crop. “No single commodity exchange outside Africa should dictate the earnings of African farmers for cocoa produced on African land. We must move from fragmented national responses to a coordinated African producers’ bloc,” he said. By pairing a continental alliance with a firm floor price, the association believes producing nations could stabilize incomes, capture more value and finally loosen the foreign grip on a crop that sits at the heart of their rural economies.