[Part One] Ghana’s Cocoa Farmer Pension Paradox: A Four-Part Series Op-Ed

When a Bird Builds Its Nest, Who Gets the Shade?

The question I am pondering in this first part essay is, When a Bird Builds Its Nest, Who Gets the Shade? I write as a cocoa farmer’s son, troubled by a pension scheme that seems to tax the poorest to benefit who exactly? My father, like many Ghanaian cocoa farmers, earns a pittance from back-breaking work. As one young farmer lamented, “Cocoa farming is backbreaking work, but it only rewards you with poverty”. Yet the new Cocoa Farmers’ Pension Scheme takes 5% of these meagre earnings for a distant retirement, while the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) contributes a mere 1% in return. In my village, we ask, “When a bird builds its nest, who gets the shade?” The bird (the farmer) labours to build security, but it feels like someone else will sit in the shade.

This pension’s logic baffles common sense. Cocoa farmers are technically self-employed, lacking the formal “employer-employee” status that guarantees things like minimum wage or paid leave. For decades, they’ve survived as informal labourers, not 9-to-5 workers with HR departments. Now, they are forced to contribute 5% of every cocoa sale towards a pension, effectively docking their already low incomes. Meanwhile, the scheme’s sponsor, COCOBOD, tops up only 1%, a token amount many stakeholders call “woefully inadequate”. Farmers in one co-operative pointed out that government workers get about 13.5% of their salary paid by their employer into pensions, so why should impoverished planters settle for 1% from theirs? It’s a stark double standard: my father must tighten his belt now for a small promise later, while the institution that controls his crop earnings chips in pennies. The power imbalance is clear.

Officials argue that COCOBOD cannot afford more. A deputy CEO claimed the Board has already passed on 87% of the cocoa export price to farmers and has no “financial muscle” to increase its share. But this raises further questions. If Ghana’s cocoa farmers truly received 87% of the export price, their incomes would be far higher than they are today. The reality is that most cocoa families live hand-to-mouth. In truth, COCOBOD’s finances have been strained by mismanagement. The Auditor-General’s 2020 report unearthed that about GH¢28.9 million earmarked for the farmers’ pension fund was left sitting as a mere accounting entry, never invested in a trust as legally required. In practice, the money was neither earning interest for farmers nor safeguarded – an embarrassing lapse that erodes trust. My father shakes his head at the headlines of such reports. After all, what good is a forced pension if the authorities can’t account for the funds?