On the northern borderlands of Ivory Coast, a helicopter arcs low over the canopy of a forest. A French pilot scans back roads for trucks and a river for canoes moving under tarpaulins. He is not searching for drugs or arms, but sacks of cocoa beans.
His efforts are part of a quiet war against a multimillion-dollar trade in smuggled cocoa, which has exploded since global prices began surging in early 2024. The illicit trade is blowing a hole in the budgets of the world’s two largest cocoa producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, and deepening a price crisis that has rocked the chocolate sector.
“It’s more dangerous to investigate cocoa than arms trafficking,” boasted the pilot, an adviser to the government, who requested anonymity and described it being “like cocaine in Colombia or in the Amazon”.