DOES GHANA COCOA BOARD THINK NIGERIA IS IN FOR COOPERATION OR COMPETITION WITH THEIR COCOA SECTOR RENAISSANCE?
Cocoa Diaries Interview with CFAN President Continues.
Continued from Part One:
Further in the conversation, I asked about their overarching goals with this revival. I wanted to understand where their focus was. Whether they were going to repeat Ghana’s mistakes of prioritising the political benefits and any benefit to the farmer to be an unintended consequence, he highlighted Increasing youth employment, the attraction of Foreign Direct Investment, Foreign Exchange earnings, and increasing the living standards of smallholder farmers' areas as the main goals they want to achieve.
· Increase youth employment:
To Mr Adeola, by increasing cocoa production, they can domesticate cocoa processing to the point where 80% of their cocoa will be processed locally. Value addition, in this case, will lead to the creation of jobs which will divert the youth from engaging in social vices. He believes the youth becoming a farmer is another source of employment and a strategy to sustain cocoa production.
· The attraction of Foreign Direct investment:
He said that, with Ghana and Ivory Coast's long-standing focus on developing their cocoa sector, they had become the destination for foreign cocoa-related investment. The proliferation of foreign-led sustainability programmes and infrastructural development in the cocoa sector of these two countries was seen by Mr Adeola as the consequence of their years of hard work and focus on the industry.
· Foreign Exchange earnings
He also intends to increase Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings with cocoa-related exports. He said that currently,
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