World Bank commits $75m to restore Ghana’s cocoa farms

The World Bank has committed approximately $75 million to a cocoa rehabilitation initiative aimed at restoring about 25,000 hectares of cocoa farms across Ghana, as the sector faces mounting pressure from disease outbreaks and declining productivity.

According to the World Bank, the funding, mobilised under the Tree Crop Diversification Project, will support efforts to revive farmlands severely affected, to improve yields, strengthen farmer incomes, and enhance the long-term sustainability of the cocoa sector.

Speaking at a World Bank Civil Society Organisation engagement on food security in Accra, Agricultural Economist at the World Bank Ghana, Dr. Ashwini Sebastian, said the programme is part of broader efforts to build resilience across West Africa’s food systems.

“The West Africa Food Systems Resilience Programme, financed by the World Bank and implemented by the Government of Ghana, has enabled us to leverage grant financing,” she said.

“We have received seed funding from the Norwegian government, which we are deploying through the programme to support key agricultural value chains.”

Dr. Sebastian explained that beyond cocoa, the programme is supporting seed system development in selected clusters, including trials of improved crop varieties that can withstand dry season conditions, particularly in northern Ghana.

“We are piloting seed varieties that can be used during the dry season, especially in the north, to improve productivity and resilience,” she noted.

She added that interventions also include the provision of cashew seedlings to farmers, as part of efforts to diversify income sources and strengthen agricultural livelihoods.

Highlighting the cocoa component, Dr. Sebastian described it as a flagship intervention. “We are putting in almost 75 million dollars to rehabilitate 25,000 hectares of cocoa farms that have been affected by disease,” she said. “Our immediate target is to restore about 5,000 hectares by July.”

The rehabilitation programme will focus on replacing diseased and unproductive trees with improved, high-yielding and disease-resistant varieties, while promoting better farm management practices.

The investment comes at a critical time for Ghana’s cocoa industry, which continues to contend with challenges such as swollen shoot disease, aging tree stocks, and climate variability. Analysts say large-scale rehabilitation efforts are essential to reversing declining output and sustaining Ghana’s position as one of the world’s leading cocoa producers.

With cocoa remaining a major source of foreign exchange, the success of the initiative is expected to have broader economic implications, including supporting export revenues and rural economic stability.

The World Bank maintains that strengthening resilience in strategic crops like cocoa is key to ensuring food security and building more robust agricultural systems across the region.