In what is known as the Cocoa War , the Ivory Coast and Ghana won a major victory against the American multinationals , Hershey and Mars .

These two chocolatiers refused to pay the premium due to cocoa growers . This premium , imposed by the first two raw material producing countries in the world and called the Decent Income Differential ( DRD ), amounts to 400 dollars or 221,295 FCFA per ton of cocoa (in addition to the market price).

But the unprecedented media campaign made by Accra and Abidjan ended up pushing back Hershey and Mars .

Both multinationals have come to recognize the importance and value of DRD in improving the lives of farmers .

The Cocoa Coffee Council (CCC) of Côte d'Ivoire and the Ghana Cocoa Board, the national regulatory bodies for the cocoa sectors, had therefore decided to suspend the certification programs for refractories.

These programs, also called sustainability, aim to ensure that multinationals buy sustainable cocoa that meets ethical production criteria (not causing deforestation or using child labor, in particular). They are an important communication and marketing element for Western consumers.

It should be noted that, in addition to the media campaign orchestrated by the regulators against chocolate makers, the threats to boycott all activities related to industrialists, producer organizations launched since Yamoussoukro last Thursday, would have had an expected effect.

Because according to experts, in the event of a boycott of farmers, it could cost dearly in terms of image and sales for these groups, which have been questioned for several years on ethical issues.

This union between Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, which alone represent 62% of world cocoa production, is also one of the factors that weighed in the balance and pushed back the chocolate makers who opposed the DRD .

As a reminder, planters are the poor relations of the world cocoa and chocolate market. According to the World Bank, the latter receive only 6% of the 100 billion dollars of annual income.

Donatien Kautcha, Abidjan