Yves Koné, the head of the cocoa industry watchdog, has suspended the operations of several cooperatives that are suspected of buying and reselling beans above the regulated price.

Yves Brahima Koné, head of the Conseil Café-Cacao, in Abidjan on 2 April 2024. © Issouf Sanogo/AFP
The Conseil Café-Cacao (CCC), which is run by Yves Brahima Koné, has removed sales and purchase codes from some forty cocoa cooperatives suspected of secretly working with operators belonging to the Lebanese community. Using cocoa farming and processing as a front, these cooperatives are thought to have been acting as unofficial traders who were buying and reselling beans above the regulated price. The CCC looked closely into these so-called cooperatives and has since dismantled several of them. Some were producing over 100,000 tonnes.
This initiative follows a period of widespread overbidding in the wake of smaller cocoa harvests. This has been very hard on small and medium-size traders, many of whom are members of the Groupement des négociants ivoiriens (GNI), a lobby of local cocoa exporters presided over by Malick Tohé. Some of its more powerful members, such as Stéphane Apoque of Kineden Commodities and Loïc Folloroux of Africa Sourcing, have complained about the practices of these companies.
Fairtrade scheme suspended
Though the CCC issues the purchase and sales codes needed to conduct transactions within the CCC traceability system, cocoa cooperatives must obtain a licence from Agriculture Minister Adjoumani Kobenan, a leading light within the ruling Rassemblement des Houphouëtistes pour la Démocratie et la Paix (RHDP) party. Though the CCC singled out cooperatives with poor practices, they have not been sanctioned by the ministry and thus still have their licences.
Backed by the vice president’s office, the CCC has nevertheless gone a step further and suspended the Fairtrade scheme in Ivory Coast. This allows cocoa farmers to charge higher prices for beans certified “sustainable and equitable” according to the criteria of Fairtrade International. However, the CCC had discovered that several of the suspended cooperatives were mixing certified and uncertified beans together. Fairtrade International supports the suspension and wants to find a solution before putting the certification process back into place.
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