Second World News Post Choc Shock

The Côte d’Ivoire is the world’s biggest producer of cocoa for the global chocolate industry. 40% of the world’s cocoa comes from the country, twice as much as the next biggest supplier, Ghana. Cocoa is the state’s main economic resource, accounting for an average 35% of the total value of Ivorian exports, valued at around US$1.4 billion per year.

A new report Hot Chocolate: How cocoa fuelled the conflict in Côte d’Avoire, published on June 8 by Global Witness, a British-based independent non-governmental organization which investigates and campaigns on the links between natural resource exploitation, conflict and corruption, shows how over US$118 million from the cocoa trade have funded both sides, the Ivorian government and the rebel Forces Nouvelles (FN), in the recent armed conflict in Côte d’Ivoire.

Since September 2002, the fighting in Côte d’Ivoire has claimed thousands of civilian lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people, leaving 40% of the population desperately poor.

The Global Witness report documents patterns of mismanagement of revenues, non-transparency of accounts, corruption and political favoritism in the Ivorian cocoa sector, as well as detailed evidence demonstrating the diversion of more than US$58 million from cocoa levies to the government’s war effort.