Falling cocoa harvests in Ivory Coast and Ghana have sent prices soaring in neighboring Nigeria. This has prompted office workers to leave their desks and become farmers, where they can earn much more in the fields. How long will the cocoa boom last? Here's what Reuters has to say.
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Anyoge Akwa, 47, grew up in the Ikomi region of southeastern Nigeria, a traditional cocoa-growing region. There were few prospects for the young man there, so he moved, decided to become an engineer and build a career in the construction industry. That was until 2023, when Akwa heard that cocoa prices were soaring and farmers in Ikomi were making a fortune, Reuters reports.
“20-year-olds without higher education were making a lot of money growing cocoa. While we, who aspired to get a PhD, were barely making ends meet,” says Aqua, who has enrolled in doctoral studies.
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So Aqua returned home and opened a cocoa farm. This became a trend for other blue-collar workers, Reuters notes.
“Last year I collected four bags. I sold the first one for almost $500, the rest for $670-800 per bag. That’s a lot of money,” he says. In 2022, such a 64-kg bag cost $40, local farmers report. That means Akwa sold one bag of cocoa for an amount equal to his annual salary as a civil engineer.
$3 Plots of Land and the Cocoa Economy
In the Ikomi region, which borders Cameroon, most of the land is owned by the community. Under traditional law, a person with family roots in the community can bring a bottle of wine, food and a modest sum of around $3 to claim a plot of land. Akwa inherited some of the land from his father and received some from the community to plant more cocoa trees, the seeds of which are processed into cocoa.
The rise in cocoa prices is linked to a fall in harvests in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world's largest cocoa exporters, which together account for 50% of global production, Reuters writes. This has caused cocoa prices to rise from $2,200-2,500 to almost $11,000 per metric ton in 2024. At the same time, in Nigeria, where cocoa is grown mostly by small-scale farmers, this business has become profitable even against the backdrop of an economic crisis and devaluation of the national currency.
“Cocoa boys,” as cocoa farmers in Nigeria are now jokingly called, are mostly men who have changed professions or returned to the countryside to take advantage of the favorable market situation, Reuters notes.
But producers are not the only beneficiaries. Among them are those who do not work directly on the land, but are intermediaries between farmers and exporters. Former banker Ndubuisi Nwachukwu, 48, also decided to radically change his career in 2022 and became a cocoa purchasing agent – on the advice of a business mentor. And he was right, writes Reuters. “In these few years I have earned more than in my entire banking career,” he says.
“You can consider me a ‘cocoa guy,’ because today, if you’re in cocoa, you’re already seen as a ‘big player,’” says Mark Bassey, 41, who left a low-paying job as a medical lab technician and returned to his home village to become a farmer.
As a child, he went to the plantation with his mother, so he had some work skills. Like many others, he wanted a change and studied science at university, but he couldn't make a decent living.
“I know I'll come back to the profession because I love it. But right now I want to focus on farming,” says Basey, who has already quadrupled his income.
This boom in cocoa farming in Ikoma and neighboring areas has driven up housing prices, and the status of a “cocoa guy” has become a symbol of success.
Cocoa bean harvest in Ivory Coast. Photo Getty Images
Smuggling and the attractiveness of the region
Nigeria is the world's fourth largest cocoa producer, according to the International Cocoa Organization, but with 315,000 tonnes per year, the country is well behind neighboring Côte d'Ivoire (2.24 million tonnes) and Ghana (654,000 tonnes).
Despite the influx of new farmers, the spread of cocoa varieties that bear fruit in as little as 18 months, and a government program to distribute free seedlings, official statistics do not show a significant increase in production in Nigeria.
“Given all these factors, Nigeria’s production should have doubled by now,” says Rashid Adedeji, director of the Nigerian Cocoa Research Institute. Part of the problem is that about 200,000 tons of Nigerian cocoa is smuggled out of the country every year.
Meanwhile, demand for cocoa tree seedlings is growing rapidly: this year the institute received over half a million applications – three times more than last year.
At the same time, some new farmers are still playing it safe. For example, Akwa, who also manages construction crews, says, “I can’t sleep because I have to call all the time to check if this or that has been done.” But he admits that if cocoa prices hold up, he will go into agriculture permanently.
To support the development of Nigeria's cocoa industry, British investment institution British International Investment (BII) invested $40.5 million in Nigerian company Johnvents in February 2025, Reuters reports. This investment will expand cocoa processing capacity to 30,000 metric tons per year.
The institution is providing the company with long-term financing for the factory in Ondo state, says Benson Adenuga, head of the Nigerian office of BII. “We are actually providing funds for the purchase of equipment, the renovation and expansion of the factory,” Adenuga added in comments to Reuters. BII will also help the company certify 90% of its cocoa to the Rainforest Alliance ’s sustainable production and traceability standards by 2027.
