NIGERIA is no longer interested in exporting raw cocoa beans but will henceforth focus on domestic processing of the product for export, President Bola Tinubu has said.

The President, who stated this in Abuja yesterday at the Cocoa Value Addition Summit, lamented Nigeria’s failure to add value to raw cocoa beans.
Represented by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, the President added: “Nigeria will no longer export raw cocoa while exporting finished products. With our cocoa, we will now process it at home and sell it to the world on our own terms. Let no one mistake this for rhetoric. In Sagamu, Ogun State, Nigerian investors have built a 70,000-tonne processing facility, the largest this nation has ever seen. Our national production capacity has crossed 150,000 tonnes a year, and it is growing.”

This is part of an ambitious plan to transform Nigeria from a major exporter of raw cocoa beans into a leading processor and manufacturer of branded cocoa products as it launched the Cocoa Value Addition Accord and a new regional alliance involving Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.

In his remarks at the summit, the Minister of State for Industry, Senator John Owan Enoh, said the initiative was designed to ensure cocoa-producing countries retain a larger share of the global chocolate value chain, deepen industrialisation, create jobs and improve incomes for millions of farmers across West and Central Africa.

The Cocoa Value Addition Accord is dedicated financing for processors through the Bank of Industry (BoI) and the development of a national cocoa traceability system to strengthen market access and compliance with emerging international standards.

The move comes as cocoa-producing countries seek to retain more value from a global chocolate industry estimated at over $100 billion annually, despite producing about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa beans.

While restating the four countries’ desire to capture about 75 per cent of the world’s cocoa market, Enoh said the current structure of the global cocoa trade leaves producing countries with only a fraction of the wealth created from the crop, while most of the value accrues to processors, manufacturers and retailers outside Africa.

“We grow the miracle. Others bottle it. We export the anonymous sack and import back the branded box, paying at both ends of the transaction,” he said.

According to him, the gap between exporting cocoa beans and manufacturing finished products represents one of the biggest industrial opportunities available to Nigeria and other African producers.

He said the Federal Government, under the Nigeria Industrial Policy 2025, had identified agro-industrial value addition as a strategic priority, with cocoa positioned as one of the flagship sectors.

At the summit, the Cocoa Value Addition Accord, which brings together the Federal Government, cocoa-producing states, farmer associations, industry groups, research institutions and development finance institutions under a common implementation framework, was adopted.

Enoh disclosed that the accord would be overseen by a Delivery Council, chaired by the Minister of State for Industry, with annual public assessments of implementation.

To stimulate private investment, the minister announced that the BOI would establish dedicated financing windows for cocoa processing projects, particularly those integrating smallholder farmers into their supply chains.

He urged investors to establish processing plants and chocolate manufacturing facilities in Nigeria instead of exporting raw beans.

The Chief Executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Dr Ransford Abbey, urged the four participating countries to explore trade opportunities offered by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to trade finished cocoa products tariff-free across their borders and stimulate local consumption.

He, however, warned that value addition is only half the battle, saying the other half is price sovereignty.
He added: “As separate nations, global buyers play us against one another to crash prices. But as a unified front, Africa should set the market’s direction. Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire account for 60 per cent of global output.
When Nigeria and Cameroon join the Initiative, we will together control a decisive 75 per cent of global output.

He declared that cocoa farmers will be incredibly proud that Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are formally united with Nigeria and Cameroon to adopt a common framework that ensures fair prices, increases domestic value addition and promotes intra-African trade and consumption of cocoa products.