The Cocoa Coast The Board Managed Cocoa Sector In Ghana Synopsis

After almost 20 years of declining cocoa production, Ghana has been able in the last decade to increase the share of export prices going to producers, more than doubling production. Contrary to Washington Consensus prescriptions, these accomplishments were achieved through reforms but without liberalization of domestic and export marketing. The Cocoa Coast: The Board-Managed Cocoa Sector in Ghana seeks to understand the success of a sector that was not liberalized. The authors identify three major reasons for Ghana’s success in cocoa production. First, cocoa producers receive an increasing share of export prices, because of factors including a stakeholder-advised process for determining producer prices that also pays explicit attention to discouraging smuggling of cocoa to neighboring countries and the popular perception that cocoa performance is tied to the country’s general economic performance. Second, the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has a policy of retaining a portion of producer revenues to promote the adoption of yield-enhancing measures. Third, centralized marketing and maintenance of the high export quality for which Ghana is known enables the country to offer stable prices to producers and opportunities for local businesses to participate in the sector and retain some power in the global value chain.

After almost 20 years of declining cocoa production, Ghana has been able in the last decade to increase the share of export prices going to producers and more than double production. Contrary to Washington Consensus prescriptions, these accomplishments were achieved through reforms that did not include market liberalization. In The Cocoa Coast: The Board-Managed Cocoa Sector in Ghana, the authors identify factors that have contributed to Ghana’s success in cocoa production. These include the accountability of the government for the sector’s performance (cocoa-sector performance being seen as a key dimension of economic management), its interest in maintaining the ability to raise funds globally as a reliable supplier of high-quality cocoa, and its policy of retaining a portion of producer revenues to promote the adoption of yield-enhancing measures. The authors also suggest how Ghana can improve the efficiency of the cocoa sector through measures such as increased transparency and curtailing services that would be better provided by the private sector. The Cocoa Coast will be a valuable resource for policy makers, development specialists, and others interested in different national development paths.

"Commodities provide a lens through which local and global histories can be understood and written. The study of commodities history follows these goods as they make their way from land and water through processing and trade to eventual consumption. It is a fast-developing field with collaborative, comparative, and interdisciplinary research, with new information technologies becoming increasingly important. Although many individual researchers continue to focus on particular commodities and regions, they often do so in partnership with others working on different areas and employing a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, placing commodities history at the forefront of local and global historical analysis. This Oxford Handbook features contributions from scholars involved in these developments across a range of countries and linguistic regions. They discuss the state of the art in their fields, draw on their own work, and signal lacunae for future research. Each of its 31 chapters focuses on an important thematic area within commodities history: key approaches, global histories, modes of production, people and land, environmental impact, consumption, and new methodologies. Taken together, the Oxford Handbook of Commodities History offers insight into the directions in which commodities history is heading, and the multiple ways in which it can contribute to a better understanding of the world"--

IFPRI’s 2018 Annual Report shares highlights of our work, which together with partners has helped to develop and tailor knowledge to local contexts, build human and institutional capacity, and support development strategies in many countries around the world. Research findings and policy developments related to fostering climate resilience, agricultural transformation, healthy diets, inclusive and efficient markets, institutions and governance, and gender are presented, along with updates on other IFPRI areas of work.

Using Ghana as a case study, this work integrates economic and political analysis to explore the challenges and opportunities of Africa's growth and transformation.

This study provides an assessment of changes in household income, livelihood sources, food consumption, and diet quality during the first months of the COVID-19 crisis in a sample of households drawn from both urban and rural areas in Ghana. Phone surveys were conducted in June 2020 with 423 urban consumers in Accra and with 369 small-scale crop and fish farmers in rural areas in six regions in middle and southern Ghana. Data was disaggregated by asset quintiles for both the urban and the rural samples. Reduction in incomes were reported by 83 percent of urban households in Accra, mainly due to business closures and lower sales from their trading enterprises. Most households, however, are showing resilience in terms of food consumption, with a majority of urban consumers surveyed maintaining their pre-COVID-19 level of food consumption; only 9 percent of urban consumers reported reductions in food consumption to cope with income loss due to COVID-19. For the respondents in the rural areas in middle and southern Ghana, 76 percent reported income loss, and all reported that their livelihoods had been affected. Thirty-four percent of 2020 minor season crop farmers experienced difficulty in selling their produce, and 43 percent of all sample crop farmers anticipated difficulties in accessing inputs in the 2020 major season, mainly fertilizers and agrochemicals. Of those growing fish, 53 percent experienced difficulty in accessing inputs, mainly feeds; 60 percent reported increased input prices; and 64 percent of those harvesting from March to June 2020 experienced difficulties in selling their fish because of lower demand, lower tilapia prices, and higher transportation costs. Despite farm and nonfarm income losses, a majority of households in the rural sample reported maintaining previous levels of diet diversity and food consumption - only 11 percent reported reducing their food consumption to cope with income loss. Several months into the COVID-19 crisis in Ghana, households in both rural and urban areas showed some resilience in terms of their agricultural production and food consumption. Regular monitoring is needed, however, especially if household savings start to dry up and coping mechanisms become more restrictive.