The ‘developed world’ would sooner let millions of Africans die than pay more for their chocolate and coffee. I’m tempted to leave it there, but I’ll attempt to justify my inflammatory statement.
About 70 percent of the world’s cocoa comes from four West African countries: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon. The Ivory Coast and Ghana are the two largest producers, accounting for more than 50 percent of the world's cocoa. In 2016, the Ivory Coast alone produced around 1.6 million tons of cocoa beans, which jumped to 1.9 million tons in the 2016-17 crop year, and over 2 million tons in 2019-20. Seemingly, their cocoa industry is booming- judging by the increasing production capacity for a resource so high in demand across rich nations.
Why is this significant? Because all of these countries fall into the category we in the West would describe as ‘developing’ if we’re being polite, ‘third-world’ if we’re old fashioned, or ‘poor’ if we’re being honest. These countries we look upon with pity from our ’developed’ nations have a few things in common: most notable in my opinion- they’re all rich in natural resources and agricultural goods, and they’re all extremely poor. But why? Surely being the main producer of one of the world’s most sought after commodities would make you rich?
As the country’s name suggests, Ivory Coast, or Côte d'Ivoire as it is officially called, has a history of being resource-rich but power-poor. Invaded and taken over by France in the late nineteenth century, the country, which prior to the invasion was a number of smaller territories, became a global hub for ivory exports, the profit of which went to their European overlords. Today they are a major producer of cocoa for European chocolate products, their lucrative resources fueling huge profits for multinational corporations based in the West. This kind of business arrangement is what’s called neocolonialism. ‘Neo’ indicating an advanced version of what came before. Before the decolonization of the African continent by its European invaders, it was clear who was pillaging each country- they were named things like ‘Italian Libya’, ‘French West Africa’, and ‘The Belgian Congo’. A clear master-slave relationship is apparent in these names, but though they have escaped the shackles of empire in a legal sense, the unfair business arrangements continue.
The Congo region, which includes the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the Republic of Congo, is particularly noteworthy. Though this area may no longer be the property of the King of Belgium (it was his personal property until 1908, including its people), the larger Congolese country- the DRC- has a GDP per capita of just $501 as of 2019. Belgium’s is $46,624. It is worth noting the DRC has 70% of the earth’s coltan, a third of its cobalt, more than 30% of its diamond reserves, and a tenth of its copper. Surely, if imperialism ended once Europe decolonized Africa, its countries would be rich by now?
Put simply, the West is rich because countries in the global south are poor. The people of Africa, south Asia, and South America are not in some way morally or intellectually lesser than those of us in Europe and North America, they have been historically exploited- and that exploitation continues to this day. When this point is raised in liberal circles in the West, a common response is to point the finger at corruption and war, as if those things never happen in G7 countries. But if we are to accept the link between poverty and crime, then as long as these countries remain poor, crime in the form of corruption and internal exploitation, and modern slavery will of course continue to flourish.
Examples of neocolonialist cruelty include the Nestle’ baby-formula scandal of the 1970s, in which Nestle trialed their baby-formula on mothers in poor countries, typically of low education and below the poverty line, causing them to stop lactating, and creating a demand for a product which was not needed before. All this happening while science was proving that breast milk is the healthier option for a baby’s development and nutrition.
As breast milk became more scarce, in part because production of milk is impacted by stress and anxiety- which Nestle caused by sending unqualified people in nurses uniforms to knock on mother’s doors and spread the idea that their babies were in danger without the formula- demand grew, and mothers became more and more desperate. They began to dilute the formula with more and more water in an attempt to save their baby’s lives, not realising that over-dilution made the nutrients ineffective, thus resulting in mass death of infants. But that’s an article for another time.
Back to cocoa and the Ivory Coast. In 2011, disputed president Laurent Gbagbo announced the cocoa trade would be nationalized. In 2011 Ivory Coast’s GDP growth was -4.2%, in 2012 it was 10.1%- a jump of 13.9%. This rise was in the context of the man widely regarded to have won a general election the previous year, and controlling some of the levers of power internationally, imposing a ban on cocoa exports in an attempt to force out the incumbent. However, some large corporations, including Nestle, ignored the ban, as it would have had a devastating impact on sales. So even in the context of a partially successful ban, political instability, and neighboring Ghana’s cashing in as an alternative cocoa source for companies respecting the ban, this nationalization yielded huge economic dividends for the Ivorian State. Imagine the boost to revenue under stable circumstances.
Western corporations, and the States that back them, know this. They know that if resource-rich ‘developing’ countries adopt protectionist policies and industrial strategies, we would be at their mercy for the goods they produce. To counter this, trading blocs like the US, EU, and China ensure maximum penetration of their markets under the guise of ‘free trade’, forcing these nations to sell us goods on the cheap in exchange for token market opportunities that only ever benefit the developed world. We keep the populations of poor nations in perpetual poverty by using their people for cheap labour to produce our consumer-goods, the threat of withdrawal and relocation keeping the livelihood of millions on a knife edge, never letting them progress or profit from the land that is rightfully theirs.
As such, while Ivory Coast’s nationalization- even in a turbulent context- has massively cut national debt and funded its treasury with money that can be used for the good of the nation, the free-market capitalism forced on them through what is essentially slave-labour continues to seriously limit wage-growth. As of 2019, the average daily earnings for an Ivorian cocoa-farmer are just 74p, about the same price as a KitKat.
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