'Cocoa boys' flock to Nigerian farmlands, drawn by high prices

By Ben Ezeamalu

IKOM, Nigeria (Reuters) - Growing up successful Nigeria's cocoa farming country of Ikom successful the southeast, Anyoghe Akwa did not spot overmuch of a future, truthful alternatively helium decided to determination away, survey civilian engineering and carve retired a vocation successful the operation industry.

That was until 2023, erstwhile helium heard that cocoa prices were surging and farmers backmost location successful Ikom were making a fortune.

"We saw 20-year-olds who ne'er attended assemblage generating a batch of wealth from cocoa farming, portion those of america who were aspiring for a PhD were struggling," said Akwa, 47, who had enrolled successful a doctorate programme.

"So we started to travel backmost and opened our ain farms."

Akwa is 1 of a cohort of caller entrants to the sector, mostly men and nicknamed "cocoa boys", who person switched to farming oregon different jobs to currency successful connected the cocoa terms surge.

The Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, which represents smallholder farmers, saw its rank summation by much than 10,000 successful 2023-2024.

In Ikom, located successful Cross River State connected the borderline with Cameroon, astir farmlands are owned by the community. Under an ancestral custom, a idiosyncratic with household roots successful the assemblage tin contiguous a vessel of wine, an offering of nutrient and a humble sum of astir 5,000 naira ($3) to person a crippled of land.

Akwa had inherited immoderate farmland from his begetter and added immoderate much done assemblage allocation truthful helium could works much cacao trees, whose seeds are processed into cocoa and chocolate.

"Last year, I harvested 4 bags. I sold the archetypal container for 800,000 naira ($500), and the others betwixt 1 cardinal and 1.2 cardinal naira per bag. It was a batch of money," helium said, noting that merchantability of conscionable 1 container matched his yearly wage arsenic a civilian engineer.

At the apical price, Akwa was selling cocoa for 20 times its worth successful 2022, erstwhile the terms of 1 64-kg container of beans was 60,000 naira, according to section growers.

NIGERIA'S COST OF LIVING CRISIS

A driblet successful output from Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world's apical 2 cocoa exporters which unneurotic relationship for 50% of planetary production, drove prices up from $2,200-$2,500 per metric ton successful 2022 to astir $11,000 successful December 2024, according to the International Cocoa Organization, an inter-governmental body.

The terms surge coincided with Nigeria's worst economical situation successful implicit 3 decades, with grounds numbers of radical being plunged into poverty.

Those producing cocoa were mostly protected, and adjacent helped by a devaluation of the naira that made exports much competitive.

Growers are not the lone beneficiaries. The cocoa concern besides involves factors, oregon middlemen betwixt farmers and licensed buying agents, who warehouse the beans and merchantability connected to exporters.

Ndubuisi Nwachukwu, 48, made the leap from banker to LBA successful 2022, inspired by a concern mentor. His timing turned retired to beryllium ideal.

"The income I've made these fewer years arsenic an LBA, if you adhd up each the wage I earned arsenic a banker, it is not up to it," helium said.

In Ikom and different cocoa-producing areas, the newly-affluent "cocoa boys" are shaking up section economies and driving up lodging costs.

"You tin see maine to beryllium a cocoa boy, due to the fact that erstwhile you (talk about) cocoa now, radical spot you to beryllium a 'big boy'," said Mark Bassey, 41, who near a low-paying occupation arsenic a aesculapian laboratory idiosyncratic to go a grower successful his ancestral home.

As a boy, Bassey followed his parent to the cocoa plantation, truthful the skills were acquainted to him. Like Akwa, helium had wanted thing antithetic and had studied subject astatine university, but helium recovered it intolerable to marque a bully wage.

"I cognize that I volition inactive spell backmost into my assemblage due to the fact that of my emotion for it, but for present I privation to absorption connected farming," said Bassey, who says helium has quadrupled his income.

SMUGGLING AND HEDGING

Nigeria is the world's fourth-largest cocoa producer, according to the ICCO, but its output of 315,000 metric tons was acold down its West African rivals Ivory Coast and Ghana, astatine 2,241,000 and 654,000 respectively.

The influx of caller farmers, coupled with caller cocoa strains that carnivore effect wrong 18 months and authorities efforts to boost the assemblage by handing retired escaped seedlings, should beryllium driving up output, but this is not reflected successful authoritative statistics.

"Putting each these things together, by present we judge that Nigeria's cocoa accumulation level would person doubled," said Rasheed Adedeji, manager of probe and strategy astatine the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria.

One crushed is that a important proportionality of Nigerian cocoa beans, astir 200,000 tons a year, are smuggled retired of the country, helium said.

The CRIN says it has received implicit fractional a cardinal requests for caller cocoa seedlings truthful acold this year, capable to screen 400,000 hectares of farmland, triple the request seen successful the aforesaid play past year.

Still, immoderate of the caller growers are hedging their bets. Akwa shuttles betwixt his workplace and assorted operation sites wherever helium inactive directs teams of workers and foremen.

"I don't slumber due to the fact that I person to support calling them to spot if they person done this oregon that," helium said. But if prices hold, helium sees a semipermanent aboriginal successful cocoa. "With what I'm seeing, it's imaginable that I would power to cocoa farming full-time."

(Reporting by Ben Ezeamalu; Editing by Estelle Shirbon and Ros Russell)