When the NDC was campaigning ahead of the 2024 elections, they made cocoa the moral centerpiece of their message, attacking the NPP government for fixing cocoa at GHC3,100 per bag, describing it as wicked and insensitive and promised the poor farmer a dramatic leap to GHC6,500 per bag if elected. The cocoa-growing regions believed this and voted massively.
Upon assuming office in January 2025, that emphatic promise evaporated. Instead of GHC6,500, farmers saw an insulting adjustment to GHC3,600, far below what had been loudly pledged.
Now, in a stunning and painful reversal announced through Finance Minister Cassiel Ato Forson, the government has slashed the price further to GHC2,587 per bag.
From GHC6,500 promised, to GH₵3,600 delivered, to GH₵2,587 imposed. This is not a policy tweak; it is a collapse of trust and murder.
The consequences of this decision will not remain on paper. They will be felt in the soil, in the markets, in the homes and most painfully in the lives of women who form the backbone of the cocoa value chain. Women cocoa farmers who already operate on thin margins will see their incomes shrink drastically. Many of them support entire households, pay school fees, finance healthcare and reinvest in their farms from cocoa proceeds. A reduction of this magnitude threatens their ability to sustain both their farms and their families.
Women farmhands and seasonal workers are equally exposed. When farmers earn less, labor costs are the first to be cut. Harvesting, fermenting, drying and bagging; activities where women provide critical labor will be scaled down. Working days will reduce, wages will fall and some women may lose employment entirely. The ripple effects will spread quickly through cocoa communities.
Beyond the farms, women dominate the local informal economy (market trading, food vending, small shops, agro-input sales, tailoring, hairdressing and transport services). Their businesses survive on the purchasing power of cocoa farmers. When cocoa income falls sharply, spending contracts. Credit becomes harder to repay. Demand declines. Rural commerce slows. Entire local economies tighten. The burden once again lands heavily on women who anchor these micro-enterprises.
The cascading impact extends further. Reduced cocoa income means delayed school payments, increased dropout risks, weakened nutrition, rising household debt and greater financial vulnerability. Youth migration will intensify as opportunities shrink. Rural savings will erode. Community development will stall. The shockwaves of this decision will be social as much as economic.
If GHC3,100 was described during the campaign as murderous and wickedness, then what does GHC2,587 represent – Genocide? If GHC6,500 was presented as achievable and just, what message does this sharp reversal send to the very farmers whose votes delivered victory?
Cocoa farmers are not asking for political poetry. They are asking for consistency, fairness and respect. A government that rose to power on the promise of lifting cocoa farmers must confront the glaring contradiction between campaign rhetoric and this governing sophistry.
For the women of Ghana’s cocoa belt (farmers, workers, traders, mothers), this is not abstract politics, it is livelihood, dignity and survival. Once again, the incompetence of an NDC administration is glaringly demonstrated.
God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong with honest and God fearing leaders.
A truism scripted by Raynella Nana Yaa, a Gender Advocate.
