Côte d’Ivoire Cocoa Price Crisis: Record Decision Turns into Market Breakdown

Three weeks before the presidential election of October 25th, 2025, President Alassane Ouattara announced a historic farmgate cocoa price of 2,800 FCFA per kilogram for the 2025-2026 cocoa season. Presented as a victory for producers, this decision would nevertheless plunge the sector into one of the most serious marketing crises in its recent history.

This is one of the main conclusions of the report “Cocoa Sector in Côte d’Ivoire: Anatomy of a Crisis (2012-2026)” published by AfroInvest and authored by Marcelin Dev. The study examines in detail what now appears to be the great paradox of Ivorian cocoa: a record price announced at the peak of the world market, but which became unsustainable a few weeks later.

Contrary to some criticisms made after the fact, the cocoa price of 2,800 FCFA was not arbitrary

It resulted automatically from the Ivorian marketing system implemented after the 2011 reform. The Coffee and Cocoa Council had sold nearly 80% of the harvest in advance at an average cocoa price of 4,149 FCFA per kilogram, theoretically guaranteeing producers approximately 60% of that value, in accordance with the system’s rules.

At that time, global cocoa prices were still trading at historically high levels, fueled by poor harvests in Ivory Coast and Ghana, as well as a global deficit estimated at nearly 489,000 tonnes. The markets seemed to validate the decision of the Ivorian authorities.

But the cocoa market changed direction with unusual brutality. A few weeks after the start of the season, international prices began to plummet. The prospect of a recovery in global production, speculative profit-taking, and expectations of future surpluses triggered a dramatic price drop. For many traders, buying cocoa at 2,800 FCFA per kilogram when the global market was approaching levels equivalent to 1,600 FCFA became economically unfeasible.

The system then found itself trapped by its own logic

Exporters and traders of cocoa had to choose between honoring contracts that had become heavily loss-making or breaking their commitments. Many opted for the latter. The consequence was immediate: trade flows seized up, stocks piled up, and nearly 200,000 tons of cocoa were stuck in warehouses and ports in Abidjan and San Pedro.

The paradox is that, according to the AfroInvest report, the presidential decision was not an election promise disconnected from economic realities. On the contrary, it was based on the very rules of the Ivorian stabilization system. But this system was designed to absorb normal market fluctuations, not such a violent reversal after a historic surge in cocoa prices.

The ensuing crisis ultimately forced the state to intervene massively to protect producers’ incomes. According to AfroInvest, the authorities mobilized approximately 231 billion FCFA to support the 2025-2026 mid-crop season and artificially maintain a level of remuneration higher than that which the market would have dictated.

Beyond the specific case of Ivory Coast, this episode serves as a textbook example for countries dependent on raw materials. It demonstrates that even a sophisticated stabilization system cannot completely disregard the realities of the global market when market fluctuations become extreme.

For the report’s authors, the real lesson of the cocoa price crisis lies not so much in the level of the guaranteed price as in Côte d’Ivoire’s persistent dependence on international cocoa prices. As long as the world’s leading producer continues to export the bulk of its production in raw form, it will remain vulnerable to the cycles of euphoria and correction that characterize commodity markets.

The record cocoa price of 2,800 FCFA will thus remain one of the major economic paradoxes of Ivorian cocoa: a rational decision at the time it was taken, but which in a few weeks became the symbol of the limits of a model confronted with the brutality of world markets.

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(Featured image by Felicitas Fragueiro via Unsplash)

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First published in Financial Afrik. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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