Before the world unwraps its chocolate, somewhere in the heat of Ghana’s Ashanti region, a farmer named Nana Nyanteng Ahenkan bends over rows of cocoa trees, machete in hand. He has been working since sunrise – eight, maybe nine hours.

“Beating and starving,” he says as he describes the rhythm of his days. There are thousands like him across West Africa, harvesting for a market that will never pay them enough to taste what they produce.

The ethics of cocoa farming expose a deeper failure in how global trade values human life. West Africa grows more than half of the world’s cocoa, yet its farmers remain mired in extreme poverty, where incomes can barely cover food and shelter.

Child labour

Across Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, poverty pulls children into the fields long before they reach adulthood. When a family survives on less than a dollar a day, school becomes optional and work becomes necessary. This is why about 1.56 million children (45%) in cocoa-growing regions work in the fields. They haul sacks heavier than their own body weight, cut open pods with sharpened blades, and handle pesticides with little to no protection.

The scale of child labour isn’t unique to cocoa farming. But in West Africa’s cocoa belt, the link is clearer and more immediate: low farmgate prices (the price paid to the farmer) create a labour shortage that children fill because no one else will work for wages this low. As one Ivorian farmer explained, “We can’t afford more manpower, so we [with the boys in the family] do everything ourselves. We barely survive doing all of this.”

These pressures have persisted despite years of corporate pledges. A review of cocoa supply chains documents more than 167 child labour incidents linked to major chocolate manufacturers. In 2021, Mars, Nestlé and Hershey were among the companies sued for child trafficking in a US lawsuit – but it was ultimately dismissed.

Self-determination and fairness

Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire have spent years trying to regain control of an industry that has never truly belonged to them. Their $400 per-tonne “living income differential” (LID) was meant to guarantee farmers a minimum premium on top of the world market price, forcing buyers to pay closer to what cocoa actually costs to produce. But both governments have pushed for deeper structural change.

Côte d’Ivoire now processes more than 42% of its own cocoa – the highest share in Africa. Ghana has taken a similar approach, backing a $200m expansion through governmental and non-governmental organisations to raise domestic processing from roughly 20% to 50% of national output within the coming years.

Both governments have introduced price reforms and raised farmgate prices, an attempt to give farmers a more stable income by paying an adjusted price per tonne produced regardless of market volatility. They have tried to curb the middlemen who underpay farmers and to tighten traceability standards as a means of limiting smuggling– although these initiatives haven’t been too successful.

Yet real control over the industry remains out of reach. Farmers have voiced concerns and now seek more of a role in how cocoa is sold and who actually profit from it. Unions have provided farmers with leverage by negotiating directly with buyers and increasing the percentage of domestic processing.

If the industry were built to value the work behind cocoa, children would be in school, farmers would be able to save, and producer countries would not have to fight for a seat at the table of their own commodity. But in 2025, progress has not yet reached the people who need it most.