“Just one bag matched my annual salary as a civil engineer.” – Anyoghe Akwa
“We’re not just farming. We’re building generational wealth.”
A surge in global cocoa prices has triggered a remarkable trend in Nigeria: thousands of professionals are ditching office jobs to grow cocoa—a shift with major implications for agriculture, livelihoods, and the economy.
In Ikom, Cross River State—one of Nigeria’s cocoa heartlands—civil engineers, teachers, and white-collar workers are leaving urban careers to cultivate cocoa, spurred by record-breaking earnings. Among them is 47-year-old civil engineer and doctoral candidate Anyoghe Akwa. Despite years of academic and professional achievements, Akwa found himself struggling financially—until 2023, when he learned that cocoa prices had soared and young, uneducated farmers were earning more than PhD students.
“I harvested four bags last year,” said Akwa. “The first sold for ₦800,000 and the others fetched up to ₦1.2 million each. Just one bag matched my entire annual salary.”
Akwa is part of a growing cohort of Nigerians capitalizing on cocoa’s price surge. Since 2022, the price of a 64kg bag of cocoa beans in Nigeria has risen from just ₦60,000 to more than ₦1.2 million—an increase of 20 times. Globally, cocoa prices skyrocketed from $2,200–$2,500 per tonne in 2022 to nearly $11,000 in late 2024, due to declining output in Ghana and Ivory Coast, which supply over half of the world’s cocoa.
The impact on Nigeria has been profound. The Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria added more than 10,000 new members in 2023–2024, many of them first-time farmers from non-agricultural backgrounds. In communities like Ikom, local customs allow ancestral land claims, making it easier for returnees like Akwa to access farmland. A simple presentation of a bottle of wine, food, and ₦5,000 to village elders often secures a plot.
The boom is not just personal—it’s national. At a time when Nigeria is facing its worst economic crisis in three decades, cocoa farming offers a vital financial lifeline. While millions face rising poverty, cocoa farmers have been largely insulated, benefiting from high international prices and a weaker naira that makes Nigerian exports more attractive.
However, challenges remain. About 200,000 tonnes of cocoa are reportedly smuggled out of Nigeria annually, depriving the country of valuable revenue and destabilizing market channels. Still, stakeholders believe the current momentum—if properly harnessed—can reposition Nigeria as a dominant cocoa exporter.
For Akwa and thousands like him, cocoa farming is more than a financial decision—it’s a return to community roots, sustainability, and long-term wealth. “It’s not just farming,” he says. “It’s building generational income.”
This is a dynamically generated comment by Sophia Martinez.