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Video length: 4 min
Ivory Coast: at the heart of cocoa trafficking
The inflationary crisis seems to be coming to an end but the prices of certain foods continue to rise. Among them, that of chocolate, due to catastrophic harvests. Highly coveted, cocoa beans are the subject of trafficking in Ivory Coast.
(France 2)
The inflationary crisis seems to be coming to an end but the prices of certain foods continue to rise. Among them, that of chocolate, due to catastrophic harvests. Highly coveted, cocoa beans are the subject of trafficking in Ivory Coast.
Contraband cocoa is stored in hundreds of bags in the middle of the bush. Brown gold, produced in Ivory Coast, that traffickers wanted to sell more expensively and illegally in neighboring countries. Faced with the scale of trafficking, the Ivorian government created a specialized gendarmerie brigade of 200 men, deployed in the west of the country to prevent the fraudulent exit of coffee and cocoa.
Smuggling thrives
Armed as if to arrest drug traffickers, the gendarmes heading towards Liberia were warned by informants. Ivory Coast is the world’s leading producer of cocoa. 2 million tonnes were produced in 2023, but 150,000 tonnes vanished. Coffee but especially cocoa are sold more expensive in neighboring countries. In Ivory Coast, the price of cocoa is set at 1.5 euros per kilo, while in Guinea and Liberia, prices are free and higher. With world prices soaring and a declining harvest, smuggling is thriving.
