Fairtrade Africa holds joint planning meeting with cocoa cooperatives in Ghana

Fairtrade’s West Africa Cocoa Programme Team held a joint planning and review meeting to assess the progress of implementation of the West Africa Cocoa Programme (WACP) with its partners. The meeting was also used to align 2022 workplans of the programme with beneficiary Cooperatives, Fairtrade and other key stakeholder organisations including COCOBOD, Forestry Commission, the Fair-Trade Ghana Network, AVSF, Tony’s Chocolonely as well as the Department of Social Welfare.

The event was held from 8^th to 11^th March in Kumasi and was attended by Leadership of the various Cooperatives and key representatives of invited stakeholders. Producers used the occasion to provide feedback on the significant role of Fairtrade in building producer resilience through organizational strengthening, climate smart approaches as well as income and product diversification, for the year under review. Through peer learning visits, and grants, Fairtrade producer organisations undertook significant activities including income and product diversification.

The West Africa Cocoa Programme was established in 2016. So far, under the programme, Producer organisations have been strengthened. In 2021, WACP Monitoring Report was published as well as an independent evaluation study of the programme conducted. The results showed a significant improvement in strengthening organisations through capacity building received from Fairtrade such as Internal Management Systems, Farm Record Keeping, Financial Management, GAPs and Climate change, child protection and Governance process.

Speaking at the event, Programme Team Leader for Cocoa, Abubakar Afful highlighted the impact of Fairtrade on strengthening producer organisations in line with the Fairtrade Africa 2021- 2025 strategy which focuses on Product and Market Development; Policy an Advocacy; Sustainable Farming Systems; and Transformed and Strengthened Producer Organisations. He also called on producers organisations and stakeholders to work together and be ready for the implementation of the EU regulation on Human Right and Environmental Due Diligence (HREDD).

Stakeholders present highlighted the need for deepening collaboration among cooperatives and organisations to enhance efficiency, increased synergy and impacts for the farmers. All stakeholders assured producers and Fairtrade Africa of their maximum support and therefore called on the Cooperatives to take advantage of the numerous programmes being run by their outfit.