Days before the October 25, 2025 general election, Ivory Coast on the 9th escalated its farm-gate cocoa price to 2,550 CFA Francs ($4.50) a kg.
After waiting since September, the government finally increased this 2025-26 main crop rate by 14% over 2024-25 mid-crop’s.
The last update in April 2024 had upped the mid-crop’s producer price to 2,200 CFA Francs ($3.60) a kg.
This latest upward revision echoes that of neighboring Ghana at 56,000 cedi ($4,639) a tonne or $4.64 a kg.
The raise remains the most important breakthrough for Ivorian farmers since the April 2025 mid-crop rate overtook 2024-25 main crop’s by 22%.
In seasonal terms, the main crop lasts between October and March while the mid-crop progresses from April through September.
While the April raise initially crossed the price past the 3-dollar-per-kg mark, October’s insured the $4/kg crossover.
Competitive Globally
So timely is the increase that it has even come to be competitive by global standards – or even better by current international trends.
Indeed, when President Alassane Ouattara was raising the bar for farmers, international cocoa rates were crashing to pre-February 2025 lows.
Western markets were selling the commodity by October 9 at approximately $6,120 a tonne, roughly half April 2024’s record $12,000.
Reasons for the dip include the West African mid-crop escaping unscathed from weather forces, even as 2026 production prospects are renewing.
The raw cocoa farm-gate rate in Ivory Coast could still remain steady despite the ongoing global demand ebb versus emerging surplus. While international rates might consequently sink, the Ivorian will remain set since the government fixes it seasonally.
In the global context, forecasts indicate that 2025-26 will have a production surplus over consumption by some 186,000 tonnes.
Some analysts weigh Abidjan’s raise as election-related while others as a reparation to growers after years of pay discrimination. Concerning the reparation score, the new cocoa producer price is indeed quite decent from an historical perspective. The below statistics show how improved it is from past records.
Ivory Coast Farm-gate Cocoa Rates Statistics
Between late 2023 and September 2025 when world’s cocoa prices surged long-term, farmers in Ivory Coast enjoyed only low contract quotations. This changed in October 2025 when the government raised the 2025-26 contract term rates to $4.50 a kg. In comparison, here is how the farm-gate price situation stood since quarter 1 2023 (Q1 2023). Other sources of the data below include Business Insider (Q4 2025) and Economie-Ivoirienne [Q4 2024, Q2 2025].
| Quarter | Farm-gate Price [CFA Francs/kg] |
| Q4 2025 | 2,550 [$4.50 @October 2025 rate] |
| Q2 2025 | 2,200 [$3.80 @October 2025 rate] |
| Q4 2024 | 1,800 [$3.17@October 2025 rate] |
| Q3 2023 | 1,260 [2.22 @October 2025 rate] |
| Q2 2023 | 1263 [$2.22 @October 2025 rate] |