Revenues from natural resources have funded and fueled civil conflicts in Africa—including
oil in Nigeria,
minerals in the DRC, and timber in Liberia. This month,
Global Witness added cocoa—the main ingredient in chocolate—to the list of conflict resources, claiming that the cash crop has funded civil conflict in Côte d’Ivoire.
The world’s largest producer of cocoa, Côte d’Ivoire accounted for 40 percent of world production in 2006, and a quarter of the country’s inhabitants work in the cocoa sector. The current civil conflict began decades ago when northern Ivoirians migrated to high cocoa-producing land in the western part of the country. In the late 1990s, bloody clashes and discriminatory policies drove thousands of migrants off the land, and in 2002 the northern rebel group Forces Nouvelles (FN) began a military campaign against the southern-based government.
For the last five years, the rebels and the government have used revenues from the cocoa trade to fund the ongoing conflict. Côte d’Ivoire’s climate of corruption and lack of transparency, coupled with the global economy’s persistent demand for cocoa, has allowed the government to tap into US$38.5 million in cocoa revenues, according to Global Witness. In addition, the report claims that cocoa institutions (with the assent of the biggest multinational exporters’ union) used levies paid by international cocoa exporters to direct US$20.3 million to the government’s war effort in an effort to retain control of land in the war zone.
Currently, a European company, Gambit Investment Ltd, is facing allegations that it traded military helicopters for cocoa, which were possibly used in attacks on civilians. Global Witness reports that government helicopter attacks and executions killed 370 civilians in the principal cocoa-growing region between October 2002 and April 2003.
The rebels in the north control a tenth of Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa exports, using a system of blockades to extract taxes on cocoa moving through their territory. Global Witness alleges that the profits from this trade now serve as an additional incentive for the FN to continue to hold the north and resist reunification.
As in its successful campaigns to bring attention to “blood diamonds” across the continent, the international community must recognize that the cost of cocoa extends beyond its market price. The UN banned the exports of diamonds from Côte d’Ivoire in 2002. Until it, along with international financial institutions and individual governments, puts pressure on the chocolate industry to take concrete steps to promote transparency and reduce its role in the conflict, there will be no end to the civil strife in Côte d’Ivoire.
