Nigeria’s cocoa farmers are racing to plant more high-yielding seedlings to replace old trees while expanding their growing areas after a six-fold jump in prices this year.

This, according to the Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, will help boost the country’s cocoa output in three years when they start fruiting.
Production may climb by 500,000 to 800,000 metric tons by 2026, Adeola Adegoke, national president of the Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, said in an interview Wednesday. That would suggest a 132 percent rise from Nigeria’s 2022-2023 production estimates by the International Cocoa Association (ICCO).

“There are lots of investments going in the sector as we speak by farmers because of the record prices,” Adegoke said.

“Cocoa farmers are planting more seedlings and taking care of their old plantations so they can have better yields. Even those not growing cocoa have become emergency cocoa farmers,” he explained.

Currently, a metric ton of the commodity sells for an average of N11.2 million at the Matori warehouse in Oshodi, Lagos.

That’s a six-fold jump compared to the N1.8 million a metric ton of cocoa beans sold for in January 2024.

Nigerian cocoa growers are making more money than their counterparts in Ghana and Ivory Coast thanks to a steep naira devaluation that has resulted in a sharp increase in the naira income from the export of the beans.

The international price of cocoa beans has almost tripled since the start of the year owing to bad weather that battered harvest in top West African growers – Ivory Coast and Ghana, causing a shortfall and cutting 50 percent of global supply.

Tempting though it may be to bank the windfall cash, farmers in Africa’s most populous country see an opportunity to invest to produce more. Many are now buying high-yielding seedlings, expanding their growing areas and planting more cocoa instead of less profitable crops.

“With the current price of cocoa, many of us are geared towards engaging in producing more cocoa instead of growing less profitable crops,” Musa Sanda, a cocoa farmer in Kurmi Local Government Area in Taraba, told BusinessDay.

Source: Business Day