Côte d’Ivoire races to meet new EU standards with only 40 percent of cocoa traceable
The 200-page report, which analyses key global issues in the chocolate industry such as poverty, deforestation, and human rights, blames weak traceability on the fragmented nature of the domestic supply chain
ABIDJAN, October 13, 2025 — Côte d’Ivoire has traced 40 percent of its cocoa beans from the 2024/2025 season [October–September], according to the 2025 edition of the Cocoa Barometer report, released last Wednesday by Voice Network, a coalition of non-governmental organisations [NGOs].
The 200-page report, which analyses key global issues in the chocolate industry such as poverty, deforestation, and human rights, blames weak traceability on the fragmented nature of the domestic supply chain.
The authors note that most cocoa sourcing in Côte d’Ivoire relies on informal intermediaries. Direct contact between traders or processors and farmers is rare, as the former usually work through middlemen, local buyers [traitants], cooperatives, or other operators.
“This lack of transparency makes it difficult to monitor the sustainability of the cocoa supply and hampers accountability for deforestation and other environmental damage,” the report stated.
The findings suggest that 60 percent of Ivorian cocoa remains untracked , consistent with a 2023 study by the Trase platform and UCLouvain, which estimated that 55 percent of cocoa exported in 2019 , nearly one million tons , was untraceable.
Cécile Rénier, a researcher at UCLouvain, previously explained: “Links between cooperatives and farmers are loosely structured. Farmers often sell to multiple buyers to cope with payment delays, while cooperatives sometimes purchase from non-members to meet client volume targets. It’s also difficult to verify that the bags sold by a farmer actually come from their own field, since production per plot is hard to estimate.”
EU regulation and local efforts
The report coincides with news that the European Commission [EC] is advocating another postponement, until 2026, of the bloc’s deforestation regulation. The law, intended to ban imports of agricultural products linked to deforestation, including cocoa, coffee, soybean, palm oil, timber, and beef, had been slated to take effect at the end of this year.
Analysts say traceability remains a critical issue for Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry, as the EU accounts for 55 percent of the country’s cocoa and cocoa product exports.
Despite the challenges, several initiatives are underway. In September 2023, Côte d’Ivoire adopted a National Coffee-Cocoa Traceability System, built on a digital platform that records all commercial transactions and includes a mechanism to label coffee and cocoa sacks.
Between April 2019 and December 2020, the Coffee and Cocoa Board [CCC] conducted a census of farmers and their plots. In 2022, the CCC began issuing identification cards to farmers, which include names, plot sizes, and other details used in coffee and cocoa sales and payment operations.
Authorities report that nearly 855,000 cards have been distributed out of 993,000 registered farmers, who collectively cultivate more than 3.2 million hectares of coffee and cocoa.
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