Cocoa Life brings Sustainability to South Africa’s Best-Loved Chocolates

Cadbury Dairy Milk announced that the chocolate slabs sold across South Africa will bear the Cocoa Life logo from July 2019. Cocoa Life is Mondelez International‘s global cocoa sustainability program.  Just as the Cadbury brothers did over 100 years ago, the program works on the ground, hand-in-hand with the men and women who grow cocoa, Cadbury Dairy Milks‘ chocolate’s essential ingredient. Just over 70% of the world’s cocoa is grown by West African farmers, with the Ivory Coast accounting for just over 40% and Ghana around 20%.  Most of these farms responsible for the world’s cocoa supply are family-owned and less than 2ha in size.  Farmers struggle with productivity: many farmers have seen their yields fall over the last few decades due to a variety of factors, including farming being left to older members of the family as younger generations are drawn to the attractions of city life; farmers clinging to traditional farming methods; diseases which have ravaged cocoa plants; and the far- reaching implications of climate change. 

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When the program launched in 2012, Mondelez International committed $400 million to Cocoa Life over 10 years to help build a thriving cocoa supply chain – by increasing cocoa productivity and empowering local cocoa farming communities to improve their resilience. Today, Cocoa Life grows opportunities for more than 142,000 cocoa farmers and 1,400 communities.  The program focuses on the areas it can make the most difference: turning cocoa into a business of choice, creating inclusive and empowered communities and conserving and restoring forests. We support the farmers to grow more cocoa from less land while the communities they live in are  empowered to steer their own development. Village saving and loans associations, provide the opportunity for farming families, especially women, to use the funds for a broad range of investments, including the purchase of fertilizers, start-up capital for new businesses to secure additional streams of income, expansion of existing businesses, starting new cocoa farms, rehabilitating old cocoa farms, and hiring laborers. 

Cocoa is the essence of our chocolate and vital to our business, so we need to ensure it is ‘made right’, Says Yaa Peprah Amekudzi, Country Lead of Mondelez International Cocoa Life Ghana. “Making it right means tackling the complex challenges cocoa farmers face, including climate change, gender inequality, poverty and child labour. Choosing the Cocoa Life logo means everyone can love our chocolates as much as we do, because its made the right way.”

Yaa Peprah Amekudzi, Country Lead of Mondelez International Cocoa Life Ghana. 

#Cocoalife

By 2025 all of Mondelez International’s chocolate brands will source their cocoa through the program. Using its scale, deep understanding through our independent, industry- leading impact evaluation and through sector-wide collaboration and partnerships, Cocoa Life aims to lead the transformation of the cocoa sector.For more information, search #CocoaLife on Facebook and visit the website on www.cocoalife.org

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