In recent years, there have been numerous studies attesting that cocoa producers in Côte d’Ivoire, the main producing country, live in poverty. They earn EUR 0.86, around 1 dollar a day, according to Barry-Callebaut and the French Development Agency[1]. This income keeps them below the poverty line[2] and to make ends meet they have to resort to child labour and rampant deforestation (the productivity of cleared land required less labour in the early years).
A pilot project supported by the Trade for Development Centre enables Coopara to centralise the fermentation and quality control of its cocoa. The results: 70% grade 1 cocoa, the Nestlé market within reach and the interest of Belvas, a Belgian producer of organic and fair trade chocolate.
After the cocoa industry was blamed for the many child labour scandals and because cocoa producers were being paid prices that were far too low, large chocolate companies took initiatives to improve the sustainability. What is the current situation, particularly after the cocoa price on the world market dropped significantly last year?
Even while market conditions are tough, across cocoa-producing regions cooperatives resolutely choose for sustainable or organic production and fair trade. Twenty of these cooperatives are supported by the Trade for Development Centre (TDC). To put a face on their endeavours, we visited Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire as well as Bolivia and Vietnam.
In countries such as the UK and the Netherlands, the awareness of fair trade gold is already well established, so some celebrities have started to display their fair trade jewellery. In Belgium, the progress is slower: you will only find 16 goldsmiths and jewellery designers working with Fairtrade or Fairmined certified materials.
Since several years the Trade for Development Centre has been coaching cooperatives active in fair or sustainable trade to better market their products. Very often it was confronted with the cooperatives’ poor knowledge of how to manage their organisation. This led to a new series of modules, more specifically coaching in business management. This report outlines our initial experience with the new module in Uganda, Rwanda and Benin.
Market research and Development of a marketing plan to increase the sales of products of SPP certified Small Producers Organizations from the South on the West European market.
Bruges is the first city in the world to launch its own fair trade chocolate bar, called Sjokla (as the word “chocolate” is pronounced in West Flanders). In doing so, the city, home to many chocolate makers, combines local craftsmanship and fair trade chocolate. The chocolate bar is also made from local ingredients.
The Enduimet Wildlife Management Area is located in Tanzania, right next to Kilimanjaro. This area is mainly inhabited by the Masai, but is also the home of elephants and many other wild animal species. The local Masai community was looking for a way to improve their standard of living and at the same time take greater care of the animals and their environment. They found a solution in the development of responsible tourism with the support of the Trade for Development Center and the local NGO Honeyguide Foundation. Check out for yourself how they do this!
In collaboration with the Trade for Development Centre of the Belgian Development Agency (BTC) and UTZ, Euromonitor International has conducted a study to investigate the market potential for third-party certified African coffee in Belgium (Fairtrade, UTZ and Rainforest Alliance).
Fair trade certification is expected to help Vietnamese cocoa enter the EU market, especially after the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement takes effect (2019), experts have said.
