Sustainable cocoa financing is helping farmers in Côte d'Ivoire to fight deforestation and the use of child labour.
After completing her studies in agricultural engineering in Yamoussoukro, the capital of Côte d'Ivoire, Aminata Diaby found work as a sustainable development auditor. Part of her job was to help farmers improve their agricultural knowledge and practices. “It was precisely we technical specialists who had finished our studies who could go back and work alongside producers in rural areas to help them improve their living conditions,” says Diaby.
Since 2022 she has coordinated the sustainability programme at ECOOKIM, an association representing 33 agricultural cooperatives (around 45,000 farmers), and works at the cocoa exporting company Akagny Cacao. Diaby and her team make sure that the cocoa beans the company buys and sells meet international sustainability standards and certifications, such as Rainforest Alliance, and the European Union's increasingly strict rules.
Côte d'Ivoire is the world's largest cocoa producer, exporting around two thirds of its output to chocolate manufacturers in the EU. Cocoa production is a driver of deforestation and is linked to the use of child labour. Between 2000 and 2019, in order to grow cocoa beans, Côte d'Ivoire cleared around 2.4 million hectares of forest. That area is roughly the size of Rwanda.
In January this year the European Investment Bank announced a €100 million intermediated loan to Banque Nationale d’Investissement (BNI), the largest lender to the cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire. The loan will promote youth employment, gender equality and the development of the cocoa production sector. Around a third of the funds will go to certified cocoa producers and companies, such as Akagny, which process and export sustainable cocoa.
Thanks to intermediated loans, BNI is able to issue many small loans to businesses across the country. BNI has lent Akagny €3.3 million, which the company uses to buy certified cocoa crops. The income from selling these crops is invested for the benefit of local communities — for example in training and equipment to help farmers improve their yields, in programmes that promote women's employment and financial independence, and in building new schools and other infrastructure such as water towers.
Halting deforestation – European rules encourage traceability of cocoa's origin
The European Union has taken steps to fight deforestation and child labour through various initiatives, such as the Sustainable Cocoa Initiative and The Alliance for Sustainable Cocoa, which call on Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, which together produce 60% of the world's cocoa, to improve oversight of the sector, to fight deforestation and child labour, and to secure decent incomes for farmers. Exporters will have to comply with the new European deforestation regulation, which is likely to enter into force in 2026.
“The government of Côte d'Ivoire has launched an ‘ambitious initiative’ to introduce new African standards that make it possible to trace the origin of crops in cocoa-producing regions and to improve environmental protection,” says Sylvain Courla, an agroforestry engineer at the European Investment Bank who works on sustainable cocoa production and forest restoration projects in Côte d'Ivoire.
“Cocoa growing has been one of the main causes of deforestation in recent decades,” Courla notes. “Cocoa is also one of the main contributors to Côte d'Ivoire's GDP. There is a global strategy for protecting forests, and there is one for producing cocoa sustainably in a way that provides a decent livelihood for the communities that depend on this sector.”
The European Investment Bank (EIB) loan to BNI was approved in September 2024, just in time for the cocoa harvest season, which runs from October to March. Within a few weeks BNI was able to develop projects – loans to agricultural cooperatives and other partners that accounted for around 90% of the funds allocated by the EIB, says Marc Antoine Coursaget, an EIB Global lending specialist responsible for deploying this investment under the project.
Around 60% of the cooperatives financed are run by young entrepreneurs or employ a significant number of young people, while 40% of all the cooperatives are run by women – and these cooperatives employ large numbers of female workers.
The EIB and the Agence Française de Développement will also provide technical assistance to help BNI strengthen its environmental and social management system and to enable cocoa producers to meet EU and international certification requirements. These rules and certifications are designed to reduce the negative impact of cocoa growing on Côte d'Ivoire's rainforests, whose area has shrunk by more than 80% since 1960. This has had devastating consequences for the region's biodiversity. Côte d'Ivoire has launched a wide-ranging forest restoration programme to make good the losses already caused. The EIB has provided €150 million to support the country's strategy for conserving, restoring and expanding its forests.
“The European Union has two priorities in Côte d'Ivoire – one is the Sustainable Cocoa Initiative, the other is the transition to a low-carbon economy,” Coursaget stresses. “By fighting deforestation, you help to cut carbon emissions.”
Digital mapping keeps cocoa out of protected forest areas
Akagny works with local cooperatives to map digitally the precise location of crops and to ensure they are not grown in specially protected areas. The geographical location of the crops is compared digitally with maps of protected areas provided by the government of Côte d'Ivoire and international organisations such as the European Forest Institute and Global Forest Watch. Akagny has been collecting data since 2012.
“If a representative mapping an area receives word that management and any other activities harmful to biodiversity are prohibited in that zone, we immediately stop supporting that particular producer,” says Aminata Diaby. “This system has been in place for a long time. We have to be certain that crops are not being grown in a protected area.” Local agents gather information about the welfare of farmers and their families and compile it in a central database holding a great deal of information about individual communities – such as how many children attend school, how many schools are available and whether communities have access to a safe water supply.
Diaby explains that this data helps determine which projects ECOOKIM should fund: “For example, if a community has a high drop-out rate or a low school attendance rate, it means a school needs to be built there.”
Sharing the profits raises yields and improves living conditions
The profits from cocoa growing are also used to fund microloans for farmers, who rarely have access to bank credit, and to buy inputs that improve plant health and productivity. At the same time, ECOOKIM trains farmers in good agricultural practice and on social issues such as child labour, forced labour and discrimination.
The union offers savings schemes for women that allow them to take out small loans to grow crops or start a business, such as opening a shop or a catering outlet. Although women grow cocoa alongside their families, they rarely control the money earned. “The idea is to create income-generating activities for women,” says Diaby.
The main aim is to make farming more profitable so that farmers and their families can live better. Diaby worries that climate change could derail these efforts. Extreme weather such as drought and flooding reduces cocoa output, as does a lack of investment in replanting crops. These difficulties could erode the recent gains in income.
“A producer must have an income that allows them to live decently,” says Aminata Diaby. “We are not there yet, and I fear that climate change and falling output will widen that gap.”
· Côte d'Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital Yamoussoukro lies in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is the port city of Abidjan. It borders Guinea to the north-west, Liberia to the west, Mali to the north-west, Burkina Faso to the north-east, Ghana to the east and the Atlantic Ocean's Gulf of Guinea to the south.
With 31.5 million inhabitants in 2024, Côte d'Ivoire was the third most populous country in West Africa. Its official language is French, but local languages are also widely used. In all, around 78 languages are spoken in Côte d'Ivoire. The country has a religiously diverse population. In 1843 the region became a French protectorate, which was later turned into a colony. Côte d'Ivoire gained independence in 1960. Thanks to coffee and cocoa production, it was West Africa's economic powerhouse in the 1960s and 1970s, but in the 1980s it went through an economic crisis that fuelled political and social instability lasting until 2011.
Since the return of peace and political stability in 2011, Côte d'Ivoire has seen rapid economic growth. Between 2012 and 2023 the economy grew in real terms by an average of 7.1% a year, the second fastest rate of economic growth in Africa and the fourth fastest in the world. In 2023 Côte d'Ivoire had the second highest GDP per capita in West Africa, behind only Cabo Verde. In 2023 Côte d'Ivoire was the world's largest exporter of cocoa beans, and its income is among the highest in the region. The economy is still heavily dependent on agriculture, which is dominated by smallholder farmers.