Keypoints:
- Cocoa price surge sparks career shifts
- Ex-bankers and scientists become farmers
- Smuggling clouds Nigeria’s cocoa stats
IN the cocoa-rich heartland of Ikom, southeast Nigeria, the pull of sweet profits is drawing professionals out of cities and back to the soil. Soaring global cocoa prices have transformed the once-overlooked farming community into a magnet for engineers, scientists, and bankers eager to cash in on what many are now calling ‘cocoa gold’.
Anyoghe Akwa, 47, once enrolled in a doctorate programme after years in civil engineering. But in 2023, hearing of cocoa fortunes being made back home, he changed course.
‘We saw 20-year-olds who never attended university generating a lot of money from cocoa farming, while those of us aspiring for a PhD were struggling,’ Akwa told Reuters. ‘So we started to come back and opened our own farms.’
He now leads a new wave of returnees, dubbed the ‘cocoa boys’, who are shaking up Ikom’s economy and way of life.
Land, roots and ripe rewards
In Cross River State, ancestral land rights make the transition relatively easy. Locals with family ties to the community can acquire farmland through a customary offering of wine, food, and about 5,000 naira ($3).
Akwa inherited some land from his father and secured more through community allocation. In 2024, his harvest brought in over 4 million naira from just four bags of cocoa — a dramatic leap from his previous civil engineering income.
According to Reuters, cocoa prices have soared from $2,200 per metric ton in 2022 to nearly $11,000 by late 2024, following major supply shortfalls in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana — the world’s two largest exporters. Nigeria’s naira devaluation has only added to the export appeal.
From banks and labs to beans
The ripple effect goes beyond farmers. Ndubuisi Nwachukwu, 48, left his banking job in 2022 to become a licensed buying agent (LBA), storing cocoa from local growers and selling to exporters.
‘The income I’ve made these few years as an LBA — if you add up all the salary I earned as a banker, it is not up to it,’ he said.
Medical lab scientist Mark Bassey, 41, also joined the movement. ‘When you talk about cocoa now, people see you to be a “big boy”,’ he said, noting his income has quadrupled since becoming a grower.
Production gap and smuggling woes
Despite this revival, Nigeria’s official cocoa output remains at 315,000 metric tons — far below its West African neighbours. Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana produced 2.24 million and 654,000 tons, respectively, according to the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO).
Rasheed Adedeji of the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN) blames widespread smuggling, estimating that up to 200,000 tons of Nigerian cocoa are illicitly exported annually.
CRIN has received over 500,000 requests for seedlings in 2025 alone — triple last year’s demand — hinting at a potential future production boom.
A sweet but cautious shift
Some newcomers are hedging. Akwa still juggles cocoa farming with his construction career. ‘I don’t sleep because I have to keep calling to see if the work has been done,’ he said. Still, he admits the numbers are tempting.
‘With what I’m seeing, it’s possible that I would switch to cocoa farming full-time.’
As Nigeria battles its worst economic downturn in decades, cocoa is proving to be more than just a cash crop — it’s becoming a path back to prosperity.
