A significant cocoa rehabilitation project in Ghana, which aims to restore over 25,000 hectares of cocoa fields impacted by disease and decreasing output, has received a $75 million commitment from the World Bank.
The money raised under the West Africa Food Systems Resilience Program will help farmers adopt better farm management techniques while replacing ageing and sick cocoa plants with enhanced, high-yielding, and disease-resistant kinds.
Ashwini Sebastian, an agricultural economist at the World Bank in Ghana, stated that the cocoa rehabilitation project is a component of larger initiatives to increase the resilience of food systems throughout West Africa when speaking at a World Bank Civil Society Organisation engagement on food security in Accra.
“The West Africa Food Systems Resilience Programme, financed by the World Bank and implemented by the Government of Ghana, has enabled us to leverage grant financing,” she noted.
She added that seed funding from the Norwegian government is also being deployed to support key agricultural value chains under the programme.
Dr Sebastian described the cocoa rehabilitation effort as a flagship intervention, emphasising its scale and urgency.
“We are putting in almost 75 million dollars to rehabilitate 25,000 hectares of cocoa farms that have been affected by disease,” she said. “Our immediate target is to restore about 5,000 hectares by July.”
The project is expected to play a crucial role in revitalising Ghana’s cocoa sector, improving farmer livelihoods, and enhancing long-term agricultural resilience.
