The History of Cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire

The Origins of Cocoa in Côte d'Ivoire

The history of Ivorian cocoa begins in the late nineteenth century, when the cocoa tree was introduced from the Gold Coast (today's Ghana) into the lands of Côte d'Ivoire. But it was thanks to the action of a French pioneer, Arthur Verdier, that this crop took root.

Based in Assinie, the country's first French colonial trading post, Verdier played a key role in the agricultural development of the region from the 1870s. In 1881, at his instigation, the first coffee trees were planted and, in the same impetus, cocoa growing took its first steps on Ivorian soil.

At first, the local populations remained wary of this foreign plant and its cultivation demands. But gradually, the economic benefits of cocoa became obvious. Attracted by this new source of income, the indigenous communities gradually adopted its cultivation.

First concentrated in the Indénié and Lagunes regions, cocoa growing gained ground over the years. It spread towards the Centre and West of the country, carried by an ideal climate: the Ivorian forest zone offers exceptional conditions for the growth of the cocoa tree.

This gradual expansion did not come without challenges. Cultivation techniques were still rudimentary and the fight against diseases and pests, although nascent, remained empirical. Nevertheless, the appeal of a cash economy, the possibility of paying the colonial tax and acquiring manufactured goods played a driving role in the engagement of village communities. Heads of families, seeing their neighbours' enrichment or the benefits gained by early adopters, were increasingly numerous in clearing new plots of forest to plant the precious beans, often in association with traditional food crops, thus lastingly marking the agricultural landscape.

From 1912, production began to build up. With 20,954 kilograms harvested that year, Côte d'Ivoire began steady growth of its sector. By the end of the First World War, it had already reached 420 tonnes – a modest but promising rise, foreshadowing an extraordinary cocoa destiny.

The Rise of Ivorian Cocoa in the 1920s-1930s

From 1926, cocoa production in Côte d'Ivoire experienced a genuine acceleration. In just a few years, exported tonnages exploded:

• 1926: 6,838 tonnes
• 1927: 9,751 tonnes
• 1928: 14,493 tonnes
• 1929: 16,515 tonnes
• 1930: 22,329 tonnes
• 1931: 19,894 tonnes
• 1932: 25,776 tonnes
• 1933: 30,914 tonnes
• 1934: 41,572 tonnes

In 1936, a new milestone was passed with 49,765 tonnes exported, against 43,564 tonnes in 1935. This progress marked the consolidation of cocoa as the flagship product of the Ivorian colonial economy.

The Major Importers of 1936:

• France: 25,089 tonnes
• United States: 16,744 tonnes
• Netherlands: 5,192 tonnes

Despite the rise of coffee and groundnuts, cocoa kept first place among Côte d'Ivoire's export products. In 1936, the value of exports at official price lists bears witness:

• Cocoa: 72,000,000 francs
• Coffee: 32,000,000 francs
• Groundnuts: 22,000,000 francs

This dynamic was largely driven by indigenous planters, who farmed nearly 6/7 of the plantations (that is, 76,371 hectares, against 11,311 hectares for European plantations).

In the Indénié district, income from cocoa enabled local populations to generate more than 100 million old francs — a considerable figure at the time.

Finally, thanks to the continued extension of cultivated areas and efforts to rejuvenate plantations, cocoa production continued to grow. Figures for the first quarter of 1937 already confirmed this positive trend.

Several factors explained this dazzling rise of Ivorian cocoa in the interwar period. The colonial administration, aware of the economic potential, actively encouraged production by developing transport infrastructure. The construction and improvement of the road network, together with the gradual extension of the Abidjan-Niger railway, proved crucial in opening up inland production areas and facilitating the shipment of beans to the port of Abidjan. The latter, then developing fast, quickly became an essential hub for the cocoa trade, able to handle growing volumes for export. At the same time, globally sustained world demand, despite the economic upheavals of the era, absorbed this growing supply from the colony.

This cocoa prosperity, although benefiting the mother country and European trading houses more, nevertheless began to transform the socio-economic fabric of the producing regions. It enabled the emergence of a class of relatively well-off indigenous planters and stimulated local trade. However, this growing specialisation in cocoa monoculture also made the local economy and planters' incomes increasingly dependent on world prices, a vulnerability that would become a major issue in the following decades. The foundations of the future Ivorian cocoa giant were firmly laid, but the challenges inherent in such dominance were also beginning to emerge.

The Golden Age and the First Warnings (After Independence – 1970s)

The Second World War marked a temporary slowdown, but the post-war period opened an era of unprecedented prosperity for Ivorian cocoa. With independence in 1960, under the leadership of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny, agriculture, and in particular the coffee-cocoa pairing, became the spearhead of national economic development – the famous "Ivorian miracle". The creation of the Price Stabilisation and Support Fund for Agricultural Products (CSSPPA, or "Caistab") in 1964 played a central role. By guaranteeing purchase prices to producers and managing export marketing, Caistab offered relative security and stimulated a massive expansion of plantations. New waves of migrants, both national and foreign, flocked to the pioneer fronts of the West and South-West, clearing forest to plant cocoa trees and transform the landscape. This proactive policy, combined with a favourable international context, allowed exponential growth in production.

The 1970s established Côte d'Ivoire as the undisputed world leader in cocoa production, with volumes rising spectacularly and soon to pass the symbolic mark of one million tonnes a year. The commodities boom of the mid-1970s, with cocoa prices reaching record highs, flooded the country with foreign currency and financed major infrastructure projects, symbols of Ivorian success. Caistab accumulated considerable surpluses, reinforcing its role as an instrument of the State's economic policy and of the redistribution, albeit partial, of the cocoa windfall. However, this prosperous period also began to reveal the first cracks in the model. Dependence on cocoa rent made the economy extremely sensitive to erratic fluctuations in world markets. In addition, orchards were beginning to age, pressure from diseases such as "swollen shoot" intensified, and the environmental consequences of the massive deforestation linked to cocoa expansion became increasingly worrying, although these concerns were then less audible than today.

The Crisis and the Beginnings of Change (1980s – 1990s)

The late 1980s and early 1990s were marked by a deep and lasting crisis. The collapse of world cocoa prices, due partly to a world overproduction to which Côte d'Ivoire had largely contributed, and to the end of the system of international cocoa agreements aimed at regulating prices, put the Ivorian stabilisation system under severe strain. Caistab, once prosperous and a symbol of State power, found itself in chronic deficit, unable to support producer prices at previous levels without worsening the public finance crisis. The heavily indebted Ivorian State had to turn to the Bretton Woods institutions (International Monetary Fund and World Bank). These began to advocate drastic structural reforms, including challenging Caistab's monopoly and liberalising the sector.

For the hundreds of thousands of Ivorian planters, this period meant a drastic and prolonged fall in income, a marked deterioration in living conditions and growing disillusionment. Investment in plantations fell, maintenance was neglected, and poverty deepened in rural areas. This cocoa crisis exacerbated social tensions and questions about the sustainability of the Ivorian economic model, too dependent on this single commodity. It was in this difficult context, where the foundations of the "miracle" seemed to be crumbling, that the Ivorian cocoa sector approached the end of the twentieth century, on the eve of major transformations that would redefine its organisation and its challenges for decades to come. Questions of sustainability, fair pay for producers and local processing, although timidly emerging, were to become central.