The tripling of prices in the 2024 cocoa season has brought fortunes to farmers in Oyo State, southwest Nigeria.
This at a time when the world’s supply deficit nears 500,000 tonnes for 2025, up from 439,000 tonnes in mid-2024. In southwest Nigeria itself, production has downsized to around 860 kg per smallholder farm due to mainly black pod disease.
Partially thanks to this production downturn and the attendant price rally, some Oyo farmers made more money in 2024 than in the combined past five years.
In a state where spot sales rule the market, farmers saw local prices spike by 300% in the past season. While late 2023 generated a maximum 4,000 naira ($2.57) a kg at the farm gate, late 2024 brought 12,000 naira ($7.72).
Better Life
According to Premium Times Nigeria, this tripling of sales receipts has even enabled some farmers to upgrade living conditions. A few have moved to the suburbs to live in their own residential developments through ample cocoa earnings.
One such grower, Tiamiyu Afolabi, earned a fortune of 25 million naira ($16,089) worth of a single year’s earnings from cocoa. For this piece of luck, he can now compare himself with fellow age-mates who are retiring from government jobs.
Indeed, his income far outstrips the latest retirement pension minimum of 25,000 naira ($16.09) that the Oyo State announced January 22, 2025.
Another View
This news has a downside however following anti-export sentiments by Nigeria’s Raw Materials Research and Development Council’s boss Nnanyelugo Ike-Muonso.
Prof. Nnanyelugo stated mid-January, 2025 that Nigeria cannot afford to export its cocoa and then import processed cocoa products.
According to the professor, the country exports all cocoa beans raw, depriving the local chocolate processors 26.5% of raw materials.
Besides, the country has to go back in the pocket to fund imports, 30% of which are for derivatives of cocoa.
Currently, very few processors manage to make cocoa products at home, especially given the reigning raw bean export price boon.
As for now, a weak naira, low worldwide reserves and steady prices will continue to benefit Oyo State’s farmers. And as the statistics below show, Nigeria as a whole is a major cocoa powerhouse in its own right.
Nigeria and Oyo State Cocoa Statistics
Nigeria is one of the leading cocoa-producing nations, with production representing 5% of the global output, as of 2017. Most of the production comes from the southwestern part of the country, which includes Oyo and Cross River states.
According to FAOSTAT, national production hit 284,232 tonnes in 2023, above the 280,000 tonnes of 2022. This is even as acreage expanded from 1,027,173 hectares (ha) in 2022 to 1,045,545 ha in 2023.
In terms of exports, Nigeria ranked the fourth largest exporter of raw cocoa beans in 2021. The year’s export value reached $560.1 million, from a volume of 366,286 tonnes, according to the World Bank. Only Ecuador, Ghana and Ivory Coast in ascending order of export value had more foreign sales that year.
How many cocoa farmers are there in Nigeria?
Nigeria boasts over 300,000 farmers, as of 2017, the majority small-scale. Over 75% of these growers operate in the southwestern region of the country.
Which farming system defines cocoa farming in Oyo State?
Cocoa growers in Oyo State, Ondo, and Osun Ogun in southwest Nigeria utilize both small-scale and shareholding farming systems. Shareholding is a system where the person who leases land earns 2/3rd of cocoa sale proceeds. Around 80% of farmers in this region have less than 5 hectares of land, while just 1% have over 10 hectares, per a 2017 survey.