Bitter Chocolate
The chronic crisis in the cocoa industry has contributed to Côte d’Ivoire's slide into civil war in two ways. First, and most significant, the persistent poverty and stagnation causes war. Second, the ethnic tensions, which arose in the cocoa industry itself, gave unscrupulous politicians the chance to make a bad situation even worse, for their personal gain. At the moment, the world cocoa price in London is high, roughly CFA 1,600 per kilo. The farmers are lucky if they get half of it for their sacks of beans. The Ivorian agents of Cargill, ADM, and Barry Callebaut offer much less than the world price. The corrupt government takes a big bite in "official" taxes. Finally, the farmers pay bribes at police roadblocks. Côte d’Ivoire over the past decades has done just about everything mainstream Western economists suggested -- and it remains trapped in poverty. The country concentrated on growing and exporting products it was "good" at, cocoa and also coffee, instead of trying to industrialize. But the chronically low world prices for these products kept the country poor. With better prices -- a little more like what protected and subsidized farmers in the US and Western Europe earn -- millions in the cocoa-growing regions of Côte d’Ivoire could have started to consume more themselves, which in turn would have promoted local industries, reduced unemployment, and gradually raised the country's standard of living. Every time those in the more prosperous parts of the world buy chocolate, we are exploiting the people who produce it. As long as we continue to tolerate this injustice, there will be no peace in Côte d’Ivoire. The crisis in Côte d’Ivoire is representative of deeply rooted structural problems in many other African nations.
http://www.thenation.com/print/article/159707/roots-cote-divoire-crisis
Tags
- LOL (175)
- USA (116)
- WTF (85)
- Iran (57)
- Internet (56)
- IranElection (45)
- Capitalism (39)
- Israel (39)
- Human Rights (38)
- Cool (35)
- View all 1959 tags »
