Chocolate now fuels war in West Africa?
Government and rebel forces in Ivory Coast used the cocoa trade to fund war, says a new report.
from the July 17, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
It calls for the supply of Ivorian cocoa to Western manufacturers to be cleaned up in order to eliminate the possibility of conflict chocolate.
But those good intentions could backfire, warns Daniel Balint-Kurti, an Ivory Coast expert and analyst for the London-based Chatham House.
Cutting Ivorian cocoa out of the global market could harm as many as 3 million to 4 million people who work in the sector, says Mr. Balint-Kurti.
"It would just devastate millions of people's lives even further and lead to a phenomenal rise in chocolate and cocoa prices worldwide," he says.
Such a ban, which Balint-Kurti says is unlikely anytime soon, hardly fulfills Djedje Mady's goal of cocoa production benefiting producers and Ivorians.
He says he yearns for the time when the government, according to him, used its revenues to build roads, hospitals, and schools and to increase workers' salaries to help boost the lives of its citizens.
Today, Gbagbo's government gets the commodities, according to Djedje Mady, and then they disappear.
Yet Gbagbo's loyalists reject any assertions that the president has personally enriched himself through cocoa revenues.
While ordinary Ivorians and Global Witness subscribe to that opinion, Mr. Kabran dismisses it as propaganda.
Kabran even wonders why the idea of "blood" cocoa has been raised now that his country is seeking peace.
"Why don't they talk about the Iraqi petrol, which is more bloody than the Ivory Coast cocoa?"
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