Vice President Jane Opoku-Agyemang has directly linked Ghana’s ambitious 24-hour economy initiative to cocoa value addition, arguing that transforming raw beans into finished products requires the infrastructure, financing, and continuous operations her government envisions.
Speaking at the Sustainable Cocoa Initiative Scale-up session during the Global Gateway Forum in Brussels, she traced Ghana’s cocoa journey from Tetteh Quarshie’s introduction of the first beans in the late 1800s to today’s network of over 800,000 farmers. However, she emphasized that true sustainability in cocoa must go hand in hand with equity for the farmers who sustain the sector.
The Vice President identified access to affordable financing as a critical obstacle preventing local processors from capturing more value. Investments often concentrate in multinational or state-owned facilities, leaving local processors struggling with high borrowing costs, she explained, highlighting a structural imbalance that perpetuates Ghana’s role as primarily a raw material exporter.
To tackle this challenge, Opoku-Agyemang proposed structured blended financing models that combine capital investment with affordable working capital, risk-sharing mechanisms, and technical support, particularly for small and rural processors. She described the EU Sustainable Cocoa Initiative and the Global Gateway Framework as vital platforms to crystallize such partnerships.
Her remarks connected cocoa processing directly to the 24-hour economy model, which aims to improve the flow of goods, energy, and data while creating round-the-clock employment opportunities. The initiative envisions industrial facilities, including cocoa processing plants, operating continuously to maximize productivity and generate multiple employment shifts.
While the African Continental Free Trade Area offers opportunities to strengthen regional value chains, Opoku-Agyemang noted that financing constraints limit how effectively Ghana can leverage this continental market. The inability of local processors to access working capital at competitive rates undermines their capacity to scale operations and compete with established multinational facilities.
The Vice President also addressed resilience amid rising global cocoa prices and supply shortfalls. She highlighted Ghana’s openness to collaborations supporting pest and disease control while expanding commercial plantations for quality assurance. These partnerships become particularly important as Ghana’s cocoa production faces challenges from swollen shoot disease, aging trees, and climate variability.
Reaffirming confidence in Ghana’s quality control systems, she stated that the country’s grading standards remain among the most rigorous in the world. Reforms at the Ghana Cocoa Board, known as COCOBOD, are aimed at fairness and investor confidence, she added, acknowledging that institutional improvements must accompany infrastructure development.
Ghana currently processes only about 30% of its cocoa beans domestically, with the remainder exported raw to be processed primarily in Europe and North America. This means the country captures a small fraction of the chocolate market’s value despite producing roughly 20% of global cocoa supplies, second only to neighboring Côte d’Ivoire.
The economics of this arrangement have long frustrated Ghanaian policymakers. While farmers receive approximately $3,000 to $5,000 per tonne for raw beans, processed cocoa butter and powder command significantly higher prices, and finished chocolate products generate margins many times greater than raw bean values. The bulk of these profits flow to multinational companies headquartered in consuming countries.
Opoku-Agyemang’s emphasis on blended financing models reflects recognition that traditional bank lending hasn’t adequately supported local cocoa processors. High interest rates, short repayment periods, and collateral requirements often prove insurmountable for small and medium enterprises seeking to establish or expand processing capacity.
The proposed financing approach would combine patient capital willing to accept longer payback periods with affordable working capital for operational expenses, risk-sharing mechanisms to reduce lender exposure, and technical assistance to help processors meet international quality standards. European development finance institutions and impact investors could potentially provide such blended finance structures.
Her Brussels speech occurred as Ghana grapples with multiple cocoa sector challenges. Production has declined from peaks above 900,000 metric tons annually to around 700,000 tons in recent seasons, driven by disease pressure, aging plantations, illegal mining damaging farmland, and climate change impacts. Simultaneously, global cocoa prices reached historic highs due to supply constraints.
The production shortfalls have complicated Ghana’s ability to meet pre-sold commitments to international buyers, forcing COCOBOD to purchase beans on spot markets at premium prices to fulfill contracts. These difficulties underscore the urgency of diversifying beyond raw bean exports toward value-added products that generate higher returns per ton.
The 24-hour economy initiative, a central plank of the National Democratic Congress government’s economic agenda, envisions coordinated infrastructure investments in energy, transportation, digital connectivity, and industrial zones. For cocoa processing, this means reliable electricity for continuous operations, cold storage facilities, efficient logistics to move products to ports, and digital systems for inventory management and quality tracking.
Without these enabling conditions, even well-financed processors struggle to compete globally. Intermittent power supply forces costly investment in backup generators, poor road infrastructure increases transportation costs and product damage, and inadequate port facilities create delays that erode profit margins.
Opoku-Agyemang’s connection between the 24-hour economy and cocoa processing suggests the government views agricultural value addition as a proving ground for broader industrialization strategies. Success in cocoa could demonstrate that Ghana can move up value chains in other commodities where it currently exports raw materials with minimal domestic processing.
The Vice President concluded by reiterating Ghana’s commitment to move beyond raw exports. We must build an economy that empowers farmers, creates decent jobs, and promotes sustainability, she stated, underscoring a vision for a cocoa industry that rewards Ghanaians as much as it sweetens the world.
Her speech comes amid ongoing debates about Ghana’s economic development model. Critics have questioned whether the 24-hour economy initiative offers concrete benefits or represents political rhetoric, while supporters argue it provides a coherent framework for addressing infrastructure deficits and unemployment simultaneously.
For cocoa specifically, the success of value addition strategies depends on multiple factors beyond financing and infrastructure. Ghana must maintain quality standards that meet international buyers’ requirements, develop marketing capabilities to sell processed products globally, and potentially compete with established chocolate manufacturers who may resist losing control over processing margins.
The European Union, Ghana’s major trading partner and chocolate consumer, will play a crucial role. EU policies on cocoa imports, sustainability certification, and development financing directly impact Ghana’s ability to expand processing capacity. The Global Gateway Forum provided an opportune platform for Opoku-Agyemang to press European partners on these issues.
Whether Ghana can significantly increase domestic cocoa processing while implementing the 24-hour economy model remains uncertain. The initiative requires sustained political commitment, substantial investment, institutional reforms, and international cooperation. However, the Vice President’s explicit linkage between the two suggests her government views them as mutually reinforcing rather than separate policy tracks.
The speech also reflects growing impatience among cocoa-producing nations with their position in global value chains. Like Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire has pursued value addition strategies with mixed results, constrained by similar financing and infrastructure challenges. Coordinated action through forums like the Brussels gathering may prove necessary to shift market structures that have favored consuming countries for over a century.
For Ghana’s 800,000 cocoa farming families, the promise of value addition offers hope for higher incomes and improved livelihoods. Whether that promise translates into reality depends partly on government policy execution and partly on international partners’ willingness to support structural changes that may reduce their own economic advantages in the chocolate value chain.