Increasing Resilience and Gender Empowerment in cocoa communities in Côte d'Ivoire

Over 60% of Ivorian cocoa farmers live below the poverty line; the economic growth stemming from the cocoa sector in the country is not benefiting everyone equally. Poverty in supply chains is a moral hazard and reputational risk, especially when trading/selling high end products with sustainability claims. Certification alone is not enough to ensure fair incomes and decent work for the farmers in an extended supply chain and the logos do not always provide the consumer confidence that is hoped for. More active effort from all value chain partners is needed to create additional value retained by the cocoa farming communities.

Earlier attempts to address this challenge have been concentrated on improving cocoa related income (i.e. yield increases) for a household. However, this has proven insufficient in closing the gap to the poverty line/living income thresholds and has in fact left farmers vulnerable to a single commodity income which suffers high price fluctuations. Hence, the focus of the project will be to complement yields increases with diversification of the income sources of cocoa households to minimise exposure to cocoa price shocks.

About 80% of the income from a cocoa household is still generated from cocoa, which is generally seen as a man’s crop in cocoa communities in the Côte d'Ivoire. As such, it is vital to ensure that the women and the youth in the cocoa communities are trained and equipped to generate additional income for the household via alternative and suitable income generating activities on and off farm.

The earlier attempts within the Unilever's dedicated coops to increase cocoa incomes has shown some success. 40% of the farmers live below the poverty line versus 60% national average.

The project partners will carry out a detailed analysis to ensure that they have identified the correct root causes of the gap to living income and identify the best approaches and partners to execute the remediation strategy.

The long-term vision of this project is to create thriving cocoa growing communities in an extended value chain. By building capacity and skills in the target communities and creating alternative income generation opportunities testing new approaches, the expectation is that the salient Corporate Social Responsibility risk of poverty will be minimised and we will have a model for thriving cocoa communities that we can replicate in other cooperatives. Learnings and achievements will be widely shared within the cocoa industry to stimulate crowding in of other cocoa actors.