June 25, 2025
By Idris Buba
The ongoing US tariffs have led to an increase in speculative buying for cocoa futures, as cocoa prices settled at $8.796 per ton during the mid-week trading session in the US futures market.
This in turn boosted the cash crop’s fortune, as Nigeria increasingly bets on the cash crop upside for the long haul.
The country produced roughly 280,000 metric tons of cocoa by the end of 2022. The output lagged well behind the top three producers, despite an increase to 340,000 at the beginning of 2024. The National Cocoa Management Board has set a goal to further increase that figure, reaching a level of 500,000 metric tons.
Major bullish driver, most notably a historic supply shortfall, still dominates, while growing global inventories of cocoa support price increases to some extent.
Nigeria is the sixth-largest cocoa exporter globally.
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However, weather disruptions, erratic supply, coupled with tariff uncertainty, have weighed negatively on the global cocoa market.
With a production of more than 2 million tons a year, Ivory Coast is the global leader, while Ghana rakes annual production of between 650,000 and 800,000 tons, followed by Indonesia which generates roughly 739,500 tons per year.
Cocoa, is Nigeria’s main source of non-oil foreign exchange earnings and may record higher cocoa exports because of strong demand and growing global prices.
Nigeria’s Vice President Kashim Shettima, in discussing federal government’s strategic focus on boosting cocoa processing levels said, “We don’t want to be just producers of cocoa; we want to be processors of cocoa because a ton of cocoa currently fetches $9,000, but processed cocoa can bring $30,000. Turning them into chocolate bars could fetch you $50,000.”
Data from National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, revealed that Nigerian high-quality cocoa bean is among the country’s top exports, along with oil products, but in imports, the Nigeria imports cocoa powder from ECOWAS countries, highlighting insufficient local processing.
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Operators in the sector have appealed to the federal government to strengthen the industry by enforcing mandatory local consumption of chocolate products, including their use as school snacks.
Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, complained that the country’s demand for chocolate locally was weak. “We ask ourselves why there’s no real local market for it? The answer is to make it compulsory in school diets for children within primary and secondary school age.”
Vice President Kashim Shettima, assured farmers that the present administration intended to focus on Nigeria’s cocoa industry, along with revitalizing the entire agricultural value chain, with emphasis on agro-processing.
“We used to be one of the world’s leading cocoa producers, but the advent of oil relegated us to the background,” Shettima observed, adding, “We can reclaim that lost glory. President Tinubu is fully committed not just to cocoa but to the entire agricultural value chain.”
He further disclosed that some recent decisions by the Federal Executive Council included setting up a National Cocoa Management Board (NCMB), whose primary aim will be to spearhead this transformation to boost production and agro-processing.
