The Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Jeroen Verheul, has led a delegation from the Dutch Cocoa Coalition platform to hold discussions with the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) on potential Ghana–Netherlands collaboration aimed at improving farmer welfare and strengthening value creation in the cocoa sector.
The meeting comes at a time when Ghana’s cocoa industry is navigating market volatility and declining global prices, developments that have compelled the government to revise the cocoa producer price downward for the remainder of the 2025/2026 crop season.
The visit reflects growing international interest in supporting Ghana’s cocoa sustainability agenda while addressing structural challenges affecting the sector, including farmer incomes, environmental sustainability and child labour concerns.
The delegation was received by the Deputy Chief Executive in charge of Operations at COCOBOD, Dr. James Kofi Kutsoati, who reaffirmed the institution’s readiness to work with international partners to advance a resilient and sustainable cocoa economy.
Discussions between the two sides focused on strengthening Ghana’s cocoa value chain through initiatives aimed at improving farmer livelihoods, promoting sustainable pricing models and encouraging agroforestry practices that can help mitigate environmental degradation.
The talks also highlighted the importance of collaborative efforts to address child labour within cocoa-growing communities, a long-standing concern among international buyers and development partners.
The engagement aligns with broader European initiatives aimed at supporting sustainability in West Africa’s cocoa industry. The European Union has launched programmes to assist cocoa farmers in meeting new environmental and traceability standards, including a €2 million project targeting about 5,000 farmers and rehabilitating over 1,000 hectares of ageing cocoa farms through agroforestry systems between 2025 and 2028.
These initiatives are partly driven by the EU’s upcoming European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which requires cocoa and other commodities exported to the EU market to be legally produced, traceable and free from deforestation. The regulation, expected to apply from the end of 2025, will require companies to demonstrate that products entering the EU were not cultivated on land deforested after 2020.
Ghana has been working closely with European partners to prepare for the regulation’s implementation, including developing the Ghana Cocoa Traceability System and conducting stakeholder workshops with industry players to ensure compliance while protecting farmer livelihoods and maintaining access to key export market
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