The Minister of Trade denounced the blatant asymmetry in profit distribution, as cocoa represents the country's second-largest export revenue source, just behind hydrocarbons. Before the European Union delegation, the government demanded immediate financial compensation in the face of the European Regulation on deforestation, or else the farmers' efforts would be reduced to nothing.

Adjusting to international ecological standards seems like a scam for local producers, who bear the costs of traceability alone without seeing an increase in their revenue. The advances made during the first consultations in Brussels in July 2017, and then consolidated through discussion cycles from 2021 to 2023, have not corrected the structural imbalances in the sector. After a brief surge in global prices, the reversal of the international situation has plunged cocoa farmers into extreme precariousness. Yaoundé refuses to let forest preservation serve as a pretext for increased marginalization of farmers and demands the establishment of a guaranteed minimum price mechanism, backed by total transparency of the margins captured by industrial transformers.

The standoff engaged over the three days of work aims to formalize a new global supply pact, reconciling ecosystem preservation and the financial viability of family farms. The Cameroonian authorities intend to rely on the coalition of West African producer countries to make the European regulation more flexible, which is deemed disconnected from sub-Saharan agricultural realities. For the country's trade diplomacy, sustainability cannot be dissociated from profitability: respect for African forests must imperatively be accompanied by an increase in purchase prices, a sine qua non condition for maintaining rural youth within a sector seeking economic balance.


Bernardo