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by osacial 1920 days ago
That's a complete nonsense on how things work in reality. The biggest problem for Africa is that MARKET of anything that they are selling is in Europe and US. They can demand anything they want(which is simple racket and anyone despises these things in business), and it all will simply end with some startup in Cali who will start to grow cocoa beans in vertical farms or some other African country will become cocoa exporter Nr1 in the world.

ANY developing European country in history started with offering raw materials and very quickly invested into manufacturing and producing good quality products. There are no obstacles for Ghana to do the same. At the moment you can see some poor European countries with industry and skilled workforce and they all have poor results because of corruption. Something tells me, that it will be the same for Ghana.
2 comments
nerdponx 1920 days ago
Demanding a greater % of the final value of a good is a racket?

And you really think that Ghana's cocoa superiority will be upended by some American startup? That's laughable, and certainly not enough of a credible threat to keep Ghana under the boot of economic imperialism.

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SyzygistSix 1919 days ago
Ghana has superiority regarding quantity, however historically the quality has been low. This is changing due to US startups cooperating with growers in Ghana and elsewhere to improve the quality, as well as use less exploitative labor, as there is a lack of quality fair trade cacao.
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SyzygistSix 1919 days ago
This doesn't really reflect the reality of the cacao market or the chocolate making industry, which is rapidly changing.

Countries like Ghana used to be held over a barrel regarding price. They produce low quality cacao usng extremely exploited labor to provide mass quantities to multinationals making low quality chocolate,like Nestle, Dove, Ghiardelli, etc.

Lately there is a lack of high quality, "fair trade" cacao for the growing high quality chocolate industry, which has taken to helping growers develop to be able to provide what they need. Not good news for the low quality producers, which, broadly speaking, are in Europe, which has been resting on its laurels and reputation while the state of the art has rapidly been improved by small, but growing companies. I don't know for certain but this may be part of the reason Ghana is refusing to sell to Switzerland. I do know that the company I worked for recently began buying cacao from Ghana. And that is certainly partly due to the quality increasing significantly.

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