Cocoa was the best performing commodity in 2024, outpacing even bitcon, as prices surged 132 percent, hitting a record high of $10,353 per ton in December, according to data from the International Cocoa Association (ICCO).
Prices of cocoa beans surged from an average of $4,453 per ton in January 2024 to an average of $10,353 per ton in December 2024, ICCO data shows.
The surge, according to experts, is driven by the worst deficit supply in decades experienced in Ivory Coast and Ghana, two major commodity suppliers that disrupted global supply.
Read also: How farmers reaped billions from cocoa, sesame exports in 2024
The surge in cocoa prices made Nigerian farmers to revive old cocoa trees in move to expand benefits from the windfall.
Cocoa prices soared to unprecedented levels during the first six months of the year, reaching historic highs of $12,000 per ton in April 2024, but declined 14 percent to $10,353 per ton in December.
Farmers told BusinessDay how they made profits from selling cocoa beans to processors in the period as well as how many others revived old trees.
Sayina Riman, a cocoa farmer in Ikom, Cross River State, told BusinessDay that he paid more attention to his cocoa plantation in 2025 than any other year.
“I paid more attention to my cocoa farm in 2025 than before. I pruned the undergrowth and applied liquid fertiliser, which is something I have never done,” Riman shared with BusinessDay in 2024.
However, Riman was only one of many farmers who intensified efforts on their cocoa plantations in 2024.
Adeola Adegoke, national president of the Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, said several cocoa farmers made huge amounts of money from cocoa sales last year.
“It shows that if governments and all of us in the private sector can remain focused in terms of increasing and decentralising the production of cocoa, Nigeria could be producing about 500,000 to 600,000 metric tons,” he said.
In the top agricultural exports for nine months of 2024, data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show that cocoa was the best performing crop in the year in Nigeria, which coincide with the global performance.
Nigeria raked in N1.46 trillion in nine months of 2024 from cocoa exports. It sold the commodity to the Netherlands, Malaysia, Indonesia, Belgium, Germany, and Italy.
One exporter told BusinessDay that he made a lot of money from cocoa exports in 2024. “We earned a lot more exporting cocoa and sesame seeds in Europe in 2024 than we had ever earned in the previous two years.
However, we did not export them raw; we processed the cocoa beans to sell them at higher prices,” said Francis Okeleke, managing director of Kenfrancis Farms, who invests in agro-based businesses.
Read also: Okomu, FTN Cocoa exports jump 205% on quality
The value of cocoa beans (both superior, standard quality & other quality not specified) exported in nine months of 2024 accounted for 7.12 percent of total agricultural exports (N20.56 trillion) in the same period.
Nigeria is currently the world’s fourth largest producer of cocoa with 280,000 metric tonnes in the 2022–2023 season, according to the ICCO, after Ivory Coast, Indonesia, and Ghana, and the third largest exporter, after Ivory Coast and Ghana.
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