Consumer demand for organic, fair trade chocolate is helping to revive an entire sector of the economy in Sao Tome. Thanks to an initiative first proposed by IFAD, 1400 farmers on this island 230 kilometres of the west coast of Africa have switched to organic cocoa production and are earning more money as a result.
Only nine years ago, cocoa producers in São Tome and Principe were suffering because of falling global prices for cocoa. Many of them abandoned their cocoa plantations, while others cut down the trees to clear land for maize or other crops. Thanks to IFAD and its partners, nearly 1,200 of them are now growing organic cocoa for the international organic chocolate industry.
Downtown Sao Tome must surely be one of the sleepiest capital cities in Africa, if not the world.
At 8 o'clock in the morning it is dead quiet. There is just the odd person cycling past and a few women waiting in the morning heat in the hope of selling their pineapples and bananas.
Jordiney’s mother Gimé said her young son felt fine in the morning.“ Jordiney went to school, but when he came home at night he said his stomach was hurting,” Gimé lamented. I had to go to the market and when I came back, he was lying on the ground vomiting, and he had diarrhoea. His eyes had turned white, and I thought he was dying. We had heard a lot about cholera on the radio, so I knew his life was really in danger.”
Print 
Send 
RSS