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Three weeks before Côte d'Ivoire's October 2025 presidential election, President Alassane Ouattara personally announced a record farm gate price for cocoa: 2,800 CFA francs per kilogram, about $5 a kilo, the highest in the country's history.

By mid-season, farmers were being paid roughly 1,200 CFA francs, a cut of about 57 percent. The Africa Desk Live examined how that happened on August 8, the day after the country marked 66 years of independence.

Côte d'Ivoire produces roughly 40 percent of the world's cocoa, about two million tons of beans a year, and cocoa and coffee together make up about 40 percent of its export earnings. A near perfect growing season produced a bumper crop just as consumers in Europe and North America stopped absorbing higher chocolate prices. Cocoa in New York fell from a record of about $12,900 a ton in December 2024 to roughly $2,950 by late February. Around 100,000 tons of unsold beans sat in the production zones, some of it reportedly rotting.

The government spent 280 billion CFA francs, close to $500 million, to buy unsold beans at the guaranteed price. "The state absorbed the shock at the top of the chain," the program observed, "and the farmer absorbed it at the bottom."

A second squeeze on a deadline

Starting in December, cocoa entering the European market must be traceable to a mapped plot of land that has not been deforested. Europe takes roughly two thirds of West African bean exports, and as of mid-year only about 48 percent of Ivorian cocoa exports were traceable. In June, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, which together produce 60 percent of the world's cocoa, announced they will synchronize their 2026 to 2027 season and harmonize their guaranteed minimum prices.

A success story, with a question

The economic record is genuinely strong. In June the country completed its IMF program having met every target, and it is now the only country in sub-Saharan Africa rated at low risk of debt distress. Growth was around 6.5 percent in 2025.

The political record raised harder questions. Ouattara won a fourth term with 89.77 percent of the vote after major challengers were barred, and his party took 197 of 255 National Assembly seats in December. In May, the government dissolved the Independent Electoral Commission by ordinance. The opposition had itself demanded a new electoral body for 15 years, the program noted, so the criticism is not the dissolution but the order in which things happened.

The scheduled Hour 1 guest was unable to join after a power outage in Dakar, and the hour ran as a report from the public record. In the second hour, Abidjan climate activist Nathanaël N'Guessan Kouamé described how shifting rains have reduced cocoa harvests in his own community.