Game Changers

Alumni facilitating economic development
in emerging economies

By Doug McInnis

Justin Bakule, MBA ’99:

Saving The Cocoa Crop

For the world’s chocoholics, the outlook is grim. Chocolate requires cocoa, and in the world’s biggest cocoa producer — the West African nation of Côte d’Ivoire — cocoa trees are growing old and increasingly unproductive.

Justin Bakule, MBA ’99, in a cocoa orchard in Côte d’Ivoire, holding a cocoa pod.

“At harvest, many of the trees literally have nothing on them,” says Justin Bakule, a consultant at FSG Social Impact Advisors, a non-profit Boston firm that helps corporations craft strategies to benefit both the businesses and the societies where they operate. His latest client is a major chocolate company that wants to address Côte d’Ivoire’s problem.

The country supplies 40 percent of the world’s cocoa. A shrinking crop threatens the livelihoods of up to one million small Côte d’Ivoire farmers, who typically haven’t had the resources to reinvest in their cocoa trees. The government has had limited resources to help them. “It’s a country already in crisis,” says Bakule. “It’s been split by civil war since the early 2000s.”

Bakule helped his corporate client develop a cocoa-revival plan that recognizes the unique roles of his client, the government, the farmers, and other stakeholders. It focuses on boosting productivity by rehabilitating existing cocoa-growing areas. Farmers will have improved access to higher-yielding cocoa trees, agricultural inputs, and agronomic best practices. Investments in infrastructure, policy, and the community will also be needed.

“The scale of this problem is what’s daunting. There are literally billions of trees, all typically farmed on 1-3 hectares,” says Bakule. “Replacing them takes time, and new technologies must be taught to the farmers. You take cuttings from young, healthy trees and graft them to older trees, which reinvigorates them with the new plant stock.” Under the plan, the government will grow trees to provide cuttings.

“Cocoa is the single ingredient that cannot be replaced in a chocolate bar,” says Bakule. “If you want to have chocolate bars, you’ve got to have cocoa.”