Governments can massage statistics, cherry-pick indicators, and flood the airwaves with reassuring language. But there is one sector in Ghana that has always told the truth about the economy, regardless of who is in power: cocoa.
Cocoa does not respond to propaganda. It responds to liquidity, planning, discipline, and credibility. And today, cocoa is telling a devastating story, one that completely contradicts the government’s claims of economic progress.
While in opposition, the NDC made cocoa the moral centrepiece of its economic critique. They accused the NPP of cheating farmers, underpaying producers, and lacking compassion for the rural backbone of the economy.
They did not speak in vague terms. They quoted numbers. They promised cocoa farmers over GH₵6,000 per bag and framed this pledge as proof of superior economic management and empathy.
That promise helped win power. Once in government, it collapsed without explanation.
Worse still, the country has entered an unprecedented crisis. Cocoa farmers who have already delivered their produce have reportedly gone unpaid for months. This is not a delay in price negotiations or a future policy debate. This is a failure to honor payment for value already produced.
In Ghana’s post-independence history, this is extraordinary. Cocoa farmers are not beneficiaries of charity. They are creditors of the state. When they are not paid, it signals something far more serious than administrative inefficiency. It signals a government struggling with cash flow in the very sector that should be providing the economy with financial oxygen.
This is why the government’s claims of economic recovery ring hollow.
A government cannot boast of macroeconomic stability while defaulting, informally but materially, on its primary foreign-exchange earners. An economy that is “doing well” does not starve its most reliable producers of liquidity. And a government that cannot pay cocoa farmers has no business lecturing the nation on fiscal health.
The contradiction is glaring. Cocoa is Ghana’s credibility crop. It stabilises rural economies, anchors foreign exchange inflows, and sustains entire communities. When cocoa systems fail, the problem is never cosmetic, it is structural. It means buffers are weak, priorities are misplaced, and fiscal discipline is absent.
What makes this situation more troubling is the moral hypocrisy at its core. A government that rose to power by amplifying farmers’ suffering cannot then preside over a system that abandons those same farmers. That is not economic misfortune; it is a breach of trust.
No serious government would allow months-long non-payment to cocoa farmers and still claim economic progress with a straight face. Charts do not buy fertiliser. Speeches do not pay school fees. Press releases do not keep rural economies alive.
If the economy were truly stabilising, cocoa payments would be among the first obligations met, not the first casualty of cash shortages.
International cocoa prices have not collapsed. What has collapsed is planning. What has evaporated is liquidity discipline. What has been exposed is the fragility behind the government’s economic storytelling.
Cocoa farmers are the most honest economic indicators Ghana has. They do not attend economic forums. They do not read glossy reports. They simply know whether they have been paid or not.
And right now, their unpaid labour is a louder verdict on the state of the economy than any government briefing.
Economic progress is not declared; it is demonstrated. It is demonstrated when those who produce value are paid on time, when systems function predictably, and when campaign promises are not discarded the moment power is secured.
An economy that cannot sustain cocoa farmers is not progressing; it is pretending. And a government that cannot keep faith with its producers has forfeited the moral authority to speak of economic success.
Cocoa does not lie. The question is whether the government is prepared to listen.
Hassan Adam Yarima writes…..
