Ivory Coast will hold its cocoa farmgate price at 1,200 CFA francs per kilogram for the 2026/27 season. That works out to roughly $2.14 a kilogram, or about £1.63, at a rate of about £0.76 to the dollar, recorded on 2 October 2026. The season began on 1 September 2026. As the world’s largest cocoa producer, Ivory Coast had room to go higher. Its Coffee and Cocoa Council had proposed a range of 1,200 to 1,500 CFA francs per kilogram, and the government chose the bottom of that band.
The decision marks a steep reversal from the record price paid barely a year earlier. At the start of the 2025/26 season, Ivorian farmers were guaranteed 2,800 CFA francs per kilogram, a historic high driven by a global cocoa shortage. That price did not survive the season. As global cocoa prices fell sharply, the government cut the guarantee to 1,200 CFA francs per kilogram in March 2026. That cut came less than halfway through the crop year.
The cocoa farmgate price now sits exactly where it landed after that mid-season cut, with no recovery built into the new season’s plan. A government source explained the logic bluntly. Holding the price flat “is the best solution and the least costly option for public finances because, beyond that, we will have to subsidise the price once again, and that will cost billions,” the source said.
Forward contracts locked in losses
Part of the financial strain traces to decisions made earlier in 2026. Ivory Coast’s cocoa regulator had already locked in forward sales agreements for more than 1.1 million tonnes of cocoa. Those deals were struck between March and June, at the depressed prices then in force. They now constrain how much flexibility the regulator has to raise farmer pay, even as it manages a crop sold months ahead of harvest.
Ghana, the world’s second-largest producer, appears to be following a similar path. The country is expected to hold its farmer price unchanged at 41,392 cedis per metric tonne. That is equivalent to about $3,797, or roughly £2,886. Between them, the two West African nations grow most of the world’s cocoa. Their parallel decisions to freeze rather than raise farmgate prices show how far global cocoa markets have cooled since the 2025/26 spike.
For farmers, the numbers translate into a harder season after a brief windfall. A PBS NewsHour feature described West African farmers confronting “rotting cocoa and a commodity crash,” prompting many to look for income outside cocoa altogether. The swing from 2,800 to 1,200 CFA francs per kilogram in under a year has left smallholders with far less certainty than the headline guarantee suggests. A government price is only a floor, and this year’s experience shows it can still be cut mid-season.
A wider West African reckoning
The cocoa farmgate price freeze lands alongside other stories of West African food economies under pressure, and occasionally, recognition. Elsewhere in the region, a Gambian chef, Saikou Bojang, was recently honoured as “Culinary Icon of Africa.” It is a reminder that West Africa’s food economy spans more than one story. It includes both the farmgate hardship cocoa growers face and the culinary achievements building the continent’s reputation abroad.
Ivory Coast’s government frames the flat price as fiscal discipline rather than retreat. Subsidising a higher guarantee, officials argue, would eventually cost the state far more than holding steady now. Cocoa farmers saw their income more than double for one season, only to watch it collapse the next. For many, the gap between a floor price and a living income is harder to ignore. The 2026/27 season will test how many smallholders stay in cocoa, and how many follow the shift PBS described toward other crops and other work.
