The cocoa connection: How 'brown gold' is smuggled between Ivory Coast, Liberia and Guinea

Guardian Nigeria

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00:00These Ivorian authorities embarking on a night patrol aren't looking for arms dealers, nor

00:24for gold or ivory traffickers.

00:29This is a trafficking hub here. It's a border zone and cocoa is produced here.

00:39Along the border, this 200-man unit has one objective, to prevent cocoa beans grown in

00:45the country from being taken into neighbouring Guinea or Liberia, where they are sold at

00:50a much higher price.

00:51This year alone, 150,000 tonnes of beans have been exported illegally.

01:01There are normal farmers who can become traffickers, but there are also well-organised groups who

01:06have contacts on the other side of the border.

01:13That night, the colonel's unit receives a tip-off. A suspicious storage site was identified

01:19a few kilometres from the border with Guinea. After hours on the road, the team arrives

01:24at dawn.

01:25If we are going to arrest someone, it will be the owner of the house.

01:33But the owner seems to have disappeared. To carry out the search, the authorities need

01:39a villager to volunteer as a witness. But, for fear of repercussions or because trafficking

01:44might actually benefit them, for several hours, no one agrees to cooperate.

01:52To prevent any problems, we can't open the door unless someone's here. We'll just open

01:57it and have a look. There's an officer from the coffee and cocoa board who's going to

02:02come and say whether the cocoa here is okay, whether it's for someone, or whether it's

02:07cocoa you've hidden to go to Guinea. That's all we want to do here.

02:12Finally, an understanding is reached after the arrival of a local chief.

02:21I wouldn't say it's a big catch because we've found more than that before. In the region,

02:26we've already found 100 tonnes in a single mission. But it's a good result. These are

02:33100 kilo bags, as you can see, and they're well filled.

02:38But on inspecting the rest of the house, there's a pleasant surprise.

02:44We weren't expecting this, but here it is. There are at least 50 bags here, at least.

02:51All in all, about five tonnes of cocoa were intercepted in this house. Cocoa which won't

02:56be leaving Ivorian territory. In Ivory Coast, the world's leading producer of cocoa, it

03:03is estimated that beans support 25 percent of the population. And this farmer's union

03:08is trying to raise awareness among planters who might be tempted to sell to traffickers.

03:15Cocoa has made Ivory Coast what it is today. And it's thanks to coffee and cocoa that we're

03:20leaders in West Africa and French-speaking Africa. So taking cocoa out of Ivory Coast

03:25goes against the interests of the nation.

03:28You've listed everything that agriculture does for Ivory Coast, but what does it do

03:32for the farmer himself? You see, as a planter, the price for a bag of rice we feed our workers

03:38with has increased. Food prices generally have increased. We pay for our own products

03:43to treat the fields. You end up with almost nothing.

03:51Unlike its neighbours, who produce less cocoa, the Ivorian government sets the purchase price

03:55for growers before each season. The price of cocoa may have skyrocketed on the stock

04:00market following this season's catastrophic harvest, but the price per kilo has stagnated

04:05at 1,500 francs, or just over two euros.

04:12We don't know what the international market price is. But if we see that other countries

04:18want to buy our products from traffickers, then the price is high. We don't support criminals,

04:25but we do ask the government to increase the price.

04:32When the others come, how much do they offer, approximately?

04:39Some say 2,500, others 5,000, others 3,000.

04:48A tempting price for growers and their cooperatives, given they are subject to increasing constraints

04:53on the traceability of their cocoa, which translates into higher costs.

05:00How's it going? It's OK.

05:05Well, let's take a look at your field. First we'll check how many hectares it is, and then

05:10we'll check that it's not in a protected forest. That's what the white people ask, the ones

05:15who eat our cocoa.

05:18Fabrice is in charge of sustainability at the Yudan Cooperative. Mapping the plots of

05:24their 1,000 producers is one of the conditions to obtain the Rainforest Alliance label, which

05:29is what certifies them as deforestation free.

05:35You can see the time it takes, and the volume of work.

05:42Voluntary certification, for which they receive a premium. But on the 1st of January next

05:47year, the EU, where 60% of Ivory Coast cocoa is currently exported, will impose its new

05:53deforestation regulations on planters, without, however, covering the consequential cost for

05:59them.

06:02With the new regulations, all this is compulsory for every cooperative and all of their producers.

06:07So if you have a cooperative with 1,000 producers, you have to do it for all of them. We only

06:12have 1,000 producers, but we have 1,200 plots, because a producer can have two or three plots.

06:20With just a few months to go before the implementation of these European regulations, tracing the

06:25origin of cocoa has become a matter of urgency for Ivory Coast. In 60 years, cocoa farming

06:31has already led to the destruction of 90% of the country's forests.

06:43In response, the government is trying to set up a digital identification system for planters.

06:51If the producer has his card, we have all the information on it. We have the coordinates

06:56of his plot, where we know the cocoa comes from. The card is directly linked to a bank

07:00account, so he comes to where the cocoa is weighed, we issue the receipt, we pay him,

07:05and the payment is made directly on his card. The risk is that if there is no card, the

07:09cocoa can come from anywhere.

07:14But despite the efforts of the authorities, it now seems highly unlikely that they will

07:19be able to equip all the country's growers by the end of the year. So is deforestation-free

07:25cocoa an impossible task? A question being asked more and more, especially since the

07:31regulations are driving more growers to move to what is becoming the new hotspot for brown

07:36gold, Liberia.

07:40This is the case for Nufu, who crossed the border to cultivate these 52 hectares just

07:46a few kilometres from Ivory Coast.

07:50The land is finished in Ivory Coast. In Ivory Coast, you can't buy land anymore. No one

07:55can give it to you. It's already classified. What belongs to the villagers, they've already

08:01divided up. The rest belongs to the government, the classified forest. We can't go there.

08:07That's why I came to Liberia.

08:11Here in Liberia, fertile forest land is still plentiful. But the authorities are absent,

08:17so deforestation is well underway. The cause? Cocoa farmers pouring in from Ivory Coast.

08:24There are already 25,000 of them, twice as many as three years ago.

08:30When you sow cocoa, you cut down the small trees and burn the big ones. Other trees are

08:37cut down with a saw. When the plantation is well exposed to the sun, the cocoa grows well.

08:46Cocoa cultivation threatens 250,000 hectares of forest in Liberia. Without trees, the cocoa

08:52plantations grow rapidly, but yields are poor in the long term. That's Gelo-Clar Abel's

08:58argument, as he crosses the area with his NGO, ID Cocoa, in a bid to raise planters'

09:04awareness.

09:06In Ivory Coast, there was a lot of deforestation. All the trees were cut down. Today, they're

09:10producing less than they should. We've come here to farm, and are we going to do the same

09:14thing that we did in Ivory Coast?

09:18So who buys these beans linked to deforestation? To answer this question, we followed Nufu,

09:25all the way to the Kivali River, which forms the border with Ivory Coast, where he and

09:31so many others sell their produce.

09:34In Liberia, the price is better, but we can't get the cocoa there because there are no roads.

09:39So we go to Ivory Coast, which is easy for us. We sell with Ivorian trackers. When I'm

09:45asked, I say it's Liberian cocoa.

09:52There's no surveillance here, so the cocoa crosses the border on these canoes. The Ivorian

09:58cooperatives then declare this cocoa as part of their production. An illegal practice,

10:03especially for those certified as free from deforestation. But it's common practice, particularly

10:09in villages close to the border.

10:12Ivory Coast is working to prevent cocoa from coming into the country. They tell us they

10:16are ensuring traceability, and therefore deforestation-free cocoa. Only, they don't control what happens

10:22at the border. We have the same people who are planters in Parra and Carrier, who come

10:27here to plant and who return with a project to Ivory Coast to sell it. So we feel that

10:32the question of traceability has not yet been resolved.

10:37A damaging situation for Ivory Coast, which wants to export clean cocoa. But also for

10:43Liberians, who don't always take kindly to migrants cultivating their land. A situation

10:49Gello sought to better understand during a meeting with a local community.

10:54During the 1990s, when we had to flee to La Cote d'Ivoire, when we saw the benefit of

11:01farming, cocoa, let's just say cash, that's when we saw the migrants owning large cocoa

11:07farms on our side that had been deforested. So when they decided to come in, we embraced

11:13the idea.

11:14We are old, but now we are more cocoa farm. What impact do we have for the villagers?

11:20Liberia is not benefiting. In a sense that, the growth and development of our cocoa here

11:29is making Cote d'Ivoire to go forward on the world market. Meaning, we are improving

11:35the commercial system of La Cote d'Ivoire instead of our own. If the cocoa is going

11:41this way, perhaps we may have a good growth system.

11:48A wish for local development funded by the profits of cocoa cultivation, but which could

11:53never be realised if Liberia doesn't implement its own traceability system and a policy to

11:59fight deforestation.

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