Bad ports access roads, swollen shoot disease threaten Cocoa export in W’Africa
Three key Cocoa producing nations in West Africa are now faced with two critical challenges.
Whereas bad port access roads are threatening export of over 30,000 tons in Apapa, Lagos Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast are working together to contain infestation of swollen shoot disease.
In an interview in Akure, one of the strategic towns in Western Nigeria noted for processing Cocoa, the President of the Cocoa Exporters Association of Nigeria (CEAON), Pius Ayodele, said the affected cargoes are either in traffic jams or stored in transit warehouses in Lagos.
Checks show that access time to any of the two Lagos ports of Apapa and Tin Can Island ports, which previously took hours, now takes as much as four weeks as trucks struggle through cratered and water-logged roads to get there.
According to Ayodele, “A greater part of this travel time is spent at the epicenter of the congestion which is just 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) to the ports”.
Nigeria currently ranks a joint fifth with neighboring Cameroon among the world’s biggest cocoa producers, with the International Cocoa Organization estimating its 2017-18 output at 240,000 metric tons.
The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) recently averred that “Ports access roads in Lagos were left to decay by successive governments over the past two decades and the multiplier effects of the extended travel are now frustrating not only exports of agro products known for their high perishability but delaying haulage time of other imported goods including petroleum products and other industrial cargoes”.
“Currently, importers say haulage costs have gone up about 400 percent because of the turnaround time to get to the ports, to get loaded and get out of the ports,” Director General of the LCCI, Muda Yusuf disclosed in an interview.
Also speaking, President of Cocoa Processors Association of Nigeria (CPAN), Akin Olusuyi said “Shipment delays are making it difficult for exporters to get credit from banks to finance their operations”, decrying that “about 1,760 tons of cocoa butter and cake are held up in the gridlock to the ports”.
“Most of them have been in the traffic to the ports for close to three weeks and are still far away from its gates.
“The cargoes that would have translated into export proceeds for us are locked up in that horrific traffic,” CPAN boss revealed.
Farm-gate cocoa prices have dropped as purchases have slowed because of the difficulties in reaching the ports, according to local buying agents. Prices have fallen from 800,000 naira ($2,208) per ton in July to 640,000 naira, according to Wale Shittu, managing director of Agrotrack Ltd., a cocoa-buying company.
However, in Ghana, the Chief Executive Officer of COCOBOD, Mr Joseph Boahen Aidoo, said the country has taken urgent steps to stop the spread of the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Disease as a measure to improve yields for greater returns.
He said about 680,000 hectares of infected farms would be affected although the COCOBOD would begin with an initial 10,000 nationwide with specific focus on the Western and Eastern regions.
The move formed part of a joint action between Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire to cut down 780,000 hectares of cocoa trees infected with the Swollen Shoot Virus to control its spread across the borders.
Aidoo, while addressing cocoa farmers from both countries at the launch of the exercise at Pillar 34, a border town in the Western Region, said the leadership of the two countries saw the joint action as an inevitable remedy to the spread of the disease, regarding the high degree of cross-border transfer of the vector.
Already, Ghana has cut 10,000 as the first step, Cote D’Ivoire starts with 100,000 hectares and with funding support from the African Development Bank, the two countries are expected to aggressively tackle the menace to enhance sustainable and improved cocoa production for both local and foreign consumption.
