Cocoa Breathes New Life into Sierra Leone Countryside

Video: Recovery After Conflict

The Rwandan coffee cooperative Dukundekawa, also known as Musasa, became Root Capital's first client in Africa in 2005. Since its founding, Musasa has grown from 300 members to more than 1,800—among them many women who were made widows by the 1994 genocide. In this video, Musasa cooperative members recall the genocide and describe how the cooperative helped them rebuild their community. They also explain the importance of Root Capital financing to Musasa.

You can also read our Client Profile on Musasa: Building Better Futures for Women in Rwanda.

Interview with Barbara Ghansah, Root Capital Loan Officer for West Africa

We spoke with Barbara about cocoa production’s role in helping Sierra Leone rebuild after the war, and about the specific contributions of Root Capital’s two new clients, Balmed Holdings Ltd. and Kpeya Agricultural Enterprise.

RC: What role is cocoa playing in reconstruction in Sierra Leone?
BG:  Cocoa is the biggest cash crop in Sierra Leone now, but production levels are much lower than before the war. After so many years of conflict, most of the cocoa farms were abandoned and overgrown with weeds. But with the help of [non-governmental organizations], development agencies and farmer organizations, they’ve been able to clear access and rehabilitate a lot of these plantations.

Cocoa is playing a big role in helping the country recover from the war because most of the new cocoa organizations started by farmers coming together, regaining access to their land and contributing labor to help each other on the farms. Usually the farmers raise money from the sale of cocoa and then use it to reconstruct houses. One farmers’ group asked each farmer to contribute a few bags of cocoa every harvest season. It then selected four farmers by ballot to receive the proceeds from the sale of these bags to finance the reconstruction of their houses.

RC: How is cocoa helping with youth employment in the rural areas?
BG: There’s very little employment for the youth in Sierra Leone. At the end of the war, you have young men with no job to do and all they have is farmland left behind. Their parents are either dead or too old to reclaim the land.

A lot of these youth are former child soldiers who’ve put down their guns, but they need another option. You also have a whole generation of children who didn’t go to school for eight to 10 years. You need to find a way for them to be productive without formal education. Agriculture is the best way to get them working. So with more interest in cocoa, they are able to go back, reclaim their farmlands and make an income. Balmed, one of Root Capital’s new clients in Sierra Leone, organizes rehabilitated soldiers into farm management groups to get them jobs in rural areas and reduce mass migration to the cities.

RC: How is Fair Trade certification helping the farm communities rebuild their livelihoods?
BG: Fair Trade certification is a relatively new concept in Sierra Leone. Kpeya was the first cocoa cooperative to get certified in 2008, and for a couple of years sold its product directly onto the export market. Before certification, Kpeya was limited to selling to the bigger traders who really didn’t have the farmers’ interests in mind and didn’t pay them a good price. With Fair Trade certification they get an extra $200 per ton, and individual farmers receive 65 percent of what the buyer pays the cooperative. They’ve used the extra income to help rebuild their homes and communities.

Balmed started pursuing Fair Trade certification just two years ago, and about half of its membership is now certified. It’s using the premium for building roads and community centers, gaining access to potable water, offering adult literacy classes and making cocoa seedlings available to farmers.

Fair Trade certification is also helping improve cocoa quality. Before the war, cocoa was very high quality. Now it’s sold as cocoa butter substitutes. After so many years of not being managed, the cocoa farms have low productivity. Farmers don’t have the resources to buy tools or use fertilizers to improve productivity, but Fair Trade is helping to change that.