Ghanaian cocoa farmers face major challenges: strongly fluctuating and sometimes low cocoa prices, ageing cocoa trees, declining soil fertility, a lack of expertise, a lack of technology and resources for sustainable growing methods, and changing climate conditions. The results are low incomes and, in many cases, child labour. Clearing to open up new, fertile farmland has led to one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world. To counteract further clearing and exploitation of the weakest, in 2019 HALBA and the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative launched the Sankofa project with Coop, the International Trade Center (ITC), Fairtrade Max Havelaar, Fairtrade Africa, WWF Switzerland and other partners, successfully completing it in 2022. The project was funded by HALBA, Coop, the ITC, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and Fairtrade Max Havelaar Switzerland.
«Sankofa» supports the sustainable cultivation of cocoa through dynamic agroforestry (DAF) and combines this with CO₂e offsetting measures. In addition, since 2020 a reference price to ensure a living income has been paid to farmers involved in the project. The project also seeks to strengthen the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative and enable it to take ownership of the project in the long term. HALBA further supports the partner cooperative in its commitment to fighting child labour and supporting women. In 2022, an additional project was launched with the aim of implementing a functioning monitoring system for child and forced labour in 40 growing communities in the region from which HALBA sources its cocoa by 2026.
Project phase 2 involving more than 3 500 farmers as well as additional financing partners such as the Finnish Foreign Ministry, Fairtrade Finland and the Dutch Trust Fund V aims to achieve the following goals by 2026: