Aly Touré, Chairman of the ICCO Council: What do cocoa producers gain from joining these international organisations?
Ambassador Aly Touré, Permanent Representative of Côte d'Ivoire to Commodity Organizations, was elected on December 18, 2020 as President of the Council of the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) for the 2020/21 campaign

It is ICCO's highest decision-making body, responsible for determining the Organization's strategy, program and budget, and overseeing its financial policy. Remember that Côte d'Ivoire is the world's leading producer and exporter of cocoa and rivals the Netherlands as the leading bean processor. Over the past two years, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana have agreed on their cocoa policies so that the planter can increase his income, in a process of sustainability of the sector.

This will be Aly Touré's major battle horse during his term of office, as he explained to CommodAfrica this morning. It also intends to increase the Organization's efficiency and initiate a wide-ranging debate with the private sector so that producing countries can also benefit from this particularly lucrative cocoa and chocolate market downstream in the chain.

Aly Touré is also a member of many other organizations of agricultural raw materials, in particular of Copal whose restructuring should be completed by the end of the year, he announced, which should increase the effectiveness of these initiatives.

Who was the last Ivorian to chair the ICCO Council?

The ICCO was created in 1973 under the auspices of the United Nations and, to my knowledge, no Ivorian had yet held the presidency (1).

According to the last ICCO agreement, which dates from 2010, the presidency of the Council is rotating. So each year, a member country holds the presidency. Last year, some members of the Organization considered that, given the issues relating to the sustainability of the cocoa economy, the various problems of deforestation, child labor and above all the income of producers, I was the person best suited to chair the Council because I am also the spokesperson for the cocoa-producing countries. From this process, countries propose candidates and the Council approves or rejects them. Last year, it was the European Union which presided, therefore the bloc of importing countries; this year, it was the exporters' turn.

You put your presidency under the seal of the defense of the price to the producer. But - and the question is recurrent - from the moment when the price of cocoa is fixed on a world financial exchange and the price of the producer, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, is linked to the world price, the fight is he not lost in advance?

No, it's a long-term fight and it's not lost. I made a number of proposals. First of all, there are facts that we need to know. Of the $100 billion in turnover generated by the global cocoa value chain, less than 6% goes to the producer. In terms of prices, if we revisit history, we see that between 1973 - the year the ICCO was created - and 1975, a ton of cocoa varied between $6,000 and $8,000; in 1977, it was at $15,000. Today, it is at $2,500. That means there is a problem.

So, of course, the ICCO is not intended to fix prices - we are on the dynamics of supply and demand - but since the ICCO is a platform for discussion between producers, consumers, the private sector, NGOs and multinationals, we thought it was the ideal setting to discuss and take part in all the initiatives. At ICCO we believe that we can and must find a solution if we want to ensure the sustainability of the cocoa sector.

So how is this going to be? Initiatives are underway such as the decent income differential, the EU-Ghana-Côte d'Ivoire dialogue, a platform on African cocoa. We would like our experts to take part in these initiatives so that our concerns are taken into account. We have no illusions: we are not going to change the price of cocoa tomorrow. But, at least, we communicate on problems.

But these topics have been discussed for a long time (2)…

You would be surprised: this is the first time in an ICCO strategic plan that reference has been made to producer income and the sustainability of the sector. When you look at the Agreements, before 73, with the quota system, we didn't talk about the price on the market: we knew who was making what volume of production. But since we entered the dynamics of supply and the market, we no longer have an impact on prices. Agreements signed since then exclude price dynamics.

As part of my presidency, I proposed for example a public-private working group on cocoa and the organization of a forum of business leaders and world leaders in cocoa. I also proposed within the ICCO a working group on international prices, bringing together some members of the ICCO and the most influential private sector operators. Because I believe that cooperation between the Member States and the private sector is essential in order to find a lasting solution.

There is already the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) which brings together all the major players. However, the ICCO is part of the great UN family where only the States sit. Apart from doing like the Inter-African Coffee Organization (IACO) and modifying the statutes to include companies as full members (3), how is this really going to change, except to create a dialogue with the WCF but which Already exists ?

Yes, I am in contact with the Foundation whose president, Richard Scobey, called me to congratulate me. At ICCO level, the Consultative Commission for the Sustainable Cocoa Economy brings together national technical structures (Ivorian Coffee-Cocoa Council, Ghana Cocoa Board, etc.), multinationals (Hershey, Mars, Cadbury, etc.), NGOs and Member States.

For the first time, we are organizing a special session on living income (LID, living income differential) on January 27 to identify trends. And that's good because the 2010 International Agreement, which entered into force in 2012, expires in 2022. We are currently in the process of amending the 2010 agreement. be that a proposal such as integrating the private sector as a member will be welcome. As it is an inter-governmental organization, it may be necessary to expand the Accord to include them as full members.

The Member States have one concern: they would not like the private sector to stifle the ICCO with their power. So they are very cautious when talking about this subject. But I think it's an avenue to explore.

Regarding prices, in the interview you gave to our colleague Fraternité Matin published yesterday, you say that one of the priorities "is the improvement of the monitoring and evaluation framework of the Global Cocoa Agenda by using the FOB price instead of measuring the producer price as a percentage of the FOB price”. And you add the question of the transparency of the futures market. Can you come back to these somewhat technical aspects, particularly with regard to the FOB price?

This is one of the concerns of the ICCO Producers College. These are the measuring instruments. Some Member States wanted these elements to be included in the new Agreement that we are negotiating. Consumer countries have reservations so we haven't gone any further. But I'm organizing the meeting of the College of Producers soon and we'll see how to move forward.

As all the producing countries do not have the same producer price system - even in Africa between Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria, moreover the common position Côte d'Ivoire-Ghana is recent - how to generate a real force of common proposal in front of consumers?

This topic is quite relevant. But we do not discuss it within the ICCO but within the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries (Copal) which is made up of six countries. As you know, Copal is undergoing major restructuring and should be operational by the end of the year. As chairman of the Restructuring Committee, I have completed my work and submitted proposals to the competent authorities. We are working on the harmonization of systems.

There is also the subject of transparency of the futures market, which makes it possible to evoke the Global Agenda. Since 2012, every year we have held the World Cocoa Conference; the first was held in Abidjan. Every two years there is a world conference. It was decided to set up a committee to monitor and assess the impact of this world conference on the lives of producers.

A year is not a lot for a presidency… So what are your calendar and thematic priorities over the next 12 months?

There are concerns at the level of the cocoa value chain. We started to organize round tables within the ICCO and we made, at one point, the point of these round tables: it did not work... Then, we started to organize the world cocoa conferences since 2012: the producers are still not satisfied… Then, we organized working sessions within the Consultative Commission for the Sustainable Cocoa Economy: the producers are still not satisfied.

So we have, in difficult negotiations, been able to insert in the strategic action program 2019-2024 the priority issue of producers' income. I think it's a win! As soon as consumers accept - for once - that we can put the price to the producer within an ICCO strategic action plan, that means that everyone is aware that there is has a problem and we need to talk about it.

As I am the spokesperson for producer countries, I speak regularly with the European Union, Russia and Switzerland and I see that they are in a good position for us to move forward on improving the level of income of producers. and how we can work together so that we can create sustainability in the sector.

Of course, we will talk with the consuming countries about the price but also with the producing countries we will talk about promoting consumption, processing, cocoa in the countries of origin, deforestation, among other subjects.

I think that with the proposals I made on the two working groups at the ICCO, which I am moreover going to submit to the next Council, I have been able to carry out informal consultations, I think that this does not of problem. What results this will give is another question!

At the end of the year, what do you want to have accomplished first?

Consumer countries, in my opinion, are ready to discuss the living conditions of producers. Everyone, including the World Cocoa Foundation, is aware that if we don't deal with this file with courage and good faith, at some point it will be complicated. If we take the Latin American countries, if we don't create the conditions for people to live better with coffee or cocoa, they will turn to cocaine. It is reality. In Africa as in Asia, if we don't do something, it will be a revolution. Consumer countries have understood this.

There is room for maneuver to improve prices on the international market, without anyone losing face. But continuing to live like that, where the peasant can no longer make a decent living from his work, becomes complicated. And the pressure is no longer tenable. I asked to set up a follow-up committee to see the impact of the world cocoa conferences on the economies of the producing countries because, back in Côte d'Ivoire, the producers ask what this conference has changed in their lives …. We spend a lot of money for little or no result. Côte d'Ivoire is one of the largest contributors to the ICCO with the EU, and we must be able to answer the question: what do Côte d'Ivoire and its producers gain from joining these international organizations? ?

For example, the Common Fund for Commodities is an inter-governmental organization headquartered in Amsterdam. I also chaired it as Chairman of the Board of Governors. We made a reform: before, the Common Fund made donations to producing countries to develop their basic products; since its reform 4 or 5 years ago, these are loans and no longer donations. On the other hand, the Fund is no longer obliged to go through international commodity organizations -OIC, ICCO, etc- to carry out projects. This has diminished the relevance of international commodity organizations. I therefore told the ICCO that the organization must be adapted to the contexts.

On the other hand, if you take a country like Brazil which is both the world's largest producer of coffee and the largest consumer, they don't have the problems that we have on the international market; they have no price problem. So we know the solution! At the same time as we must sit down to find consensual mechanisms on prices, we must also tell the producing countries to embark on processing and promoting consumption. Because, given that traditional consumer countries are saturated in terms of consumption, we must turn to emerging markets. We are going to do missions in Russia and China for a generic chocolate campaign.

Under your presidency, will the United States join the ICCO?

I intend to make an offensive to invite them to join if possible. I await the inauguration of the new President.

(1) Let us recall that another Ivorian, Jean-Marc Anga, was Executive Director of the ICCO from 2010 to 2018. It was under his mandate that the headquarters of the organization moved from London to Abidjan (read between other articles on CommodAfrica on the subject Jean-Marc Anga from ICCO: 2017 was a very difficult year for cocoa)

(2) Cocoa in Berlin: financing sustainability through VAT in consumer countries

(3) Read our interview with the OPCW Secretary General, Frederick Kawuma: Frederick Kawuma leaves to his successor at the head of the OPCW a new coffee agreement for Africa