Bitter Crop

Ghana's cacao plantations in crisis

- ARANYA

AT A COCOA FARM in the town of Samreboi, in western Ghana, a car sits abandoned, weeds growing in its dusty interiors. The farm itself has been destroyed by illegal gold-mining-a fate it shares with many cocoa plantations across Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, two West African countries that accounted for over sixty percent of the global supply of cacao beans till 2022. In Samreboi, Janet Gyamfi, a 52-year-old cocoa farmer and single parent, had hoped to pass on her plot, with nearly six thousand cacao trees, to her children. Today, fewer than a dozen trees are left standing. "This farm was my only means of survival," Gyamfi told Reuters, breaking down at the sight of pools of cyanide-tainted, mud-coloured waste water that the miners left in the wake of their small-scale operations, locally referred to as galamsey.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: Janet Gyamfi, a 52-year-old cocoa farmer, meets with other farmers affected by illegal gold mining, locally known as galamsey, in the Samreboi community of western Ghana on 26 February 2024.