Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asantehene, has said Cocoa alone can no longer shoulder Ghana’s economic ambitions.
The Asantehene asserted that cocoa has long been the backbone of Ghana’s economy, symbolising discipline, sacrifice, and resilience.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu II also warned that cocoa faces growing threats, including pollution from illegal mining, and climate change, altering rainfall patterns.
He further commended the government’s efforts to diversify the tree crop sector, emphasising cashew, coconut, oil palm, rubber, mango, and shea as potential drivers of growth.
The Asantehene highlighted that if cocoa currently generates approximately two billion dollars annually, the other six major tree crops could collectively generate 12 billion dollars or more for Ghana in the future.
The Asantehene, in a speech read on his behalf by the Nkoranza Manhene, Nana Kwame Baffoe IV, at the 2026 Ghana Tree Crops Investment Summit and Exhibition, stated, “It has educated our children, built our communities, sustained rural livelihoods, and earned Ghana global recognition as a dependable agricultural producer”.
“This vision is not speculative. It is firmly grounded in economic logic, ecological necessity and global market demand. As such, it deserves sustained attention and full national support and investment,” the Asantehene said.
He added, “The combined strength of Ghana’s diverse tree crops can become a powerful engine of sustainable growth. This journey will, however, require patience, long-term capital, discipline and effective coordination. Tree crops are far more than commercial commodities”.
“So, I therefore issue a clarion call to all traditional authorities across Ghana. Let us deliberately make land available for large-scale, responsible tree crop development,” he urged.
Meanwhile, President John Dramani Mahama Speaking at the Accra Reset Addis Reckoning event in Addis Ababa on Saturday, February 14, President Mahama explained Ghana’s cocoa challenges, “There are issues, and I’ll just give one example from Ghana. Just before I left, we had a crisis in our cocoa sector. We set the producer price for the farmer. By the time we set the price, the cocoa on the international market was $7,200.
And we have a policy where we gave 70% of the world market price to the farmers. The other 30% is used by the administration to supply fertilisers to the farmers, provide scholarships for their children, and all that kind of thing”.
“The cedi’s value was 11.5 cedis to $1. After we set the producer price, the world market price has declined to $4,200. The cedi has appreciated in value by 10.7 to the dollar. So suddenly it means that for every ton you buy at the producer price, you have a gap, and so we’ll be losing. And so we held a crisis meeting”.
John Mahama further explained government’s decision to stop relying on foreign funding arrangements for cocoa purchases saying, “We took decisions that one of the major problems is that to buy cocoa from our own farmers, we rely on funding from outside. You know what the collateral for funding is? Our cocoa beans. So you have to collateralise the beans. The financier buys the beans, just ships them [out]. They pay you the international market price.
So one of the key decisions we’ve taken is that we’re going to stop foreign funding for the purchase of our cocoa. We are going to raise domestic bonds. We have enough cedis in Ghana to pay for our cocoa. We’re going to raise domestic bonds and buy our own cocoa. We don’t need to collateralise the beans. And you know the interesting part?
We have the capacity to process 400,000 tons of those beans. But because the beans are collateralised, we cannot allocate [them] to local processors. We have to ship all the beans outside.
Now, if we buy them ourselves, take 400,000 tons out of the beans and give it to our local processors to add value, that is what Accra Reset is about”.