Ghana’s Cocoa Paradox: Sixty Years of Talk and a Nation Bleeding Value
By E.A. Randolph-Koranteng (Rev)
Author of the Book “Tomorrow Happened Yesterday “ on Amazon.com
For decades, Ghana’s name has been synonymous with cocoa. At one time, we stood alone as the world’s leading producer, a crown that spoke to the richness of our soil and the labor of our people. Yet, for more than sixty years, that crown has been slowly tarnished—not by competition abroad, but by inaction at home.
Think tanks and economists, including some of Ghana’s finest minds, have long delivered a clear and consistent diagnosis. The prescription has never been a mystery: we must cease being a nation of raw material exporters. The path to economic sovereignty lies in value addition. By processing our cocoa beans into chocolate, liquor, powder, and cosmetics before they leave our shores, we capture the profits that currently fatten the economies of foreign manufacturers. This is not a complex economic theory; it is common sense.
What is truly intriguing—and deeply frustrating—is our collective failure to act on this knowledge. Year after year, the issue has been reduced to a political football, kicked back and forth across the airwaves. On radio, television, and now social media, activists and politicians deliver impassioned oratories about the need to industrialize our cocoa sector. It is a staple of our national discourse, a crowd-pleaser that fills manifestos with fine print and lofty intentions.
Yet, when the opportunity to govern arrives, the performance is abysmal. The rhetoric remains, but the execution evaporates. We have demonstrated, time and again, that as a nation we possess the capacity to mobilize resources and execute complex projects—we build roads, we erect infrastructure. But when it comes to this singular, transformative economic shift, there is a deafening silence. There is no deliberate, national effort.
We have become experts in the art of talking, masters of diagnosing our own ailments without ever performing the surgery. The gap between what we know and what we do has become our most stubborn economic weakness.
This is not a plea for another radio debate. This is a call to retire the oratory. The analysis is complete. The consensus is clear. The path forward is illuminated.
One grows weary of listening to the same solutions repackaged for every election cycle. The real question is no longer “What should we do?” but rather, “When will we finally come to the table and do it?”
It is time to stop talking about the wealth we are losing and start building the infrastructure to keep it. The world’s taste for chocolate will not wait for us to find our resolve. The time for fine intentions is over. The time for action is now.
Thanks for reading: May The Good Lord renew our energy and clear our minds from distractions. Shalom and life to you.
