Cadbury Schweppes promised on January 28 to invest 44 million pounds ($87.16 million) over the next decade to support high-quality sustainable cocoa output in Ghana and also in India, Indonesia and the Caribbean.
Ghana, the world's No. 2 producer and Cadbury's biggest supplier, would receive more than 70 percent of the funds to be disbursed in the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership, which would seek to help around a million cocoa farmers and their communities. Cadbury will operate the partnership in cooperation with the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) and Ghana's government.
"We hope to secure the future of cocoa production in Ghana for the next 100 years, starting from the government goal of harvesting 1 million tonnes by 2010," said Matt Shattock, president of Cadbury Britain and Africa.
Ghana, the world's second largest cocoa producer after Ivory Coast, is aiming to harvest 650,000 tonnes of cocoa in the 2007/2008 season.
Cadbury said a study it had funded by the Universities of Sussex and Accra showed average production for a cocoa farmer in Ghana had dropped to only 40 percent of potential yield. Cocoa farming had become less attractive to the next potential generation of growers, the research indicated.The partnership programme would seek to address these problems by helping Ghanaian farmers increase their yields and produce top quality beans. It also aimed to introduce new sources of rural income through micro-finance and business support for new enterprises, as well as investing in community-led development such as backing education and building water wells.
Ghanaian President Kufuor welcomed the Cadbury initiative, but called on the company to also invest in processing cocoa beans in the West African country.
Cadbury said it would initially invest 1 million pounds in 2008 as a seed fund, with annual funding levels rising to a steady rate of 5 million pounds from 2010. The initial investment in Ghana in 2008 would be 600,000 pounds, rising to 3 million pounds a year.
