Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 This 27 hectare plot was teeming with nearly 6,000 cacao trees just last year.
00:08 Today, less than a dozen remain.
00:11 The stripped landscape, dotted with pools of cyanide-tainted wastewater, is a victim
00:16 of illegal gold miners, also known as "galamsey".
00:20 For Janet Giamfi, the destruction of her land is a devastating blow.
00:25 "My toil, my livelihood, all was destroyed and it's not easy.
00:31 It hurts.
00:33 It's not as if there's another job anywhere that I can rely on.
00:36 I've no source of income anywhere."
00:41 Giamfi had been resisting the galamseyers' threatening demands to sell them her plantation
00:46 when one day last June, armed guards blocked her entry and bulldozers ripped out her trees.
00:52 And she is not alone in this case.
00:55 Across the country, cacao plantations are ceding ground to gold miners.
01:00 According to a study conducted four years ago by Ghana's cacao marketing board, Cocobod,
01:05 around 20,000 hectares of land had been lost to galamsey.
01:08 "If you have all these farms being lost, productivity affected as a result of illegal mining, then
01:16 its impact on the industry is one we are really struggling to deal with."
01:21 Another problem also looms.
01:23 Climate change.
01:25 Among the world's undisputed cacao powerhouses, accounting for over 60% of global supply,
01:31 Ghana and neighbouring Ivory Coast are both facing catastrophic harvests this season.
01:37 Furthermore, Ghanian plantations are also battling a deadly virus which is killing the
01:42 trees.
01:43 Cocobod estimates that 590,000 hectares of land have now been infected with the swollen
01:48 shoot virus.
01:50 The situation may spell the beginning of the end of West Africa's cacao supremacy, opening
01:55 the door for new producers, particularly in Latin America.