Jake Kudjo Samahar, Director of Special Services at COCOBOD, has disclosed that Ghana lost 7,128.13 tonnes of cocoa to smuggling between the 2020 and 2025 crop seasons in the Volta and Oti regions.
He explained that cocoa output in these areas has seen a sharp decline over the years.
“The tonnage recorded for 2020/21 crop year was 7,215.19, which reduced to 5,656.25 in 2021/22, further downward to 874.31 in the 2022/23 crop year, while 2023/24 recorded 468.75 tonnes with 2024/25 crop year recording 87.06 tonnes,” he stated.
Mr. Samahar further revealed that Ghana lost nearly US$1.1 billion between 2022 and 2025 due to cocoa smuggling into neighbouring Togo and Côte d’Ivoire.
“We are losing a lot of revenue because if you look at within three years from 2022-2025, Ghana has lost almost $1.1 billion through cocoa smuggling into neighbouring Togo and Côte d’Ivoire,” he said.
The announcement was made during a COCOBOD board working visit to the Volta and Oti regions, where members engaged with stakeholders in the cocoa industry.
According to COCOBOD, security operatives in both regions have been implicated as major contributors to the smuggling trade, worsening the losses and undermining border control efforts.
Mr. Samahar explained that the illegal trade takes place through both local movements across border communities and transit routes into neighbouring countries, often aided by compromised checkpoints.
“The uniqueness of the smuggling in the Volta region and Oti is that we have two categories of smuggling. The first is the local smuggling, where cocoa beans are moved from our farms in the Volta region or Oti region into Togo. And then we have the transit ones that move from other regions through the corridors of the eastern corridor down to or into Togo,” he said.
“This means that the security services are not manning their checkpoints. Some of them have compromised themselves very much,” he added.
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