The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) will begin to award scholarships to 3,000 wards of cocoa farmers from the next academic season as part of a broader welfare system to the cocoa industry. Ghana economic reports
The scheme is expected to cover 9,000 students by the third year.
As a marked departure from the previous scheme run by the board, the new scholarship arrangement will not benefit staff of the company. The greater part of beneficiaries of the scholarship scheme will be agriculture and related study students, with particular emphasis on those in the colleges of agriculture.
At a sensitisation programme for media personnel on the new Ghana COCOBOD Bill, 2026, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the COCOBOD, Dr Ransford Abbey, said the scheme would be restricted to the wards of cocoa farmers. He said a technical committee of people with knowledge in the education sector would be set up to preside over the qualification criteria for the scholarship scheme to ensure fairness in the process. The scheme for tertiary students, Dr Abbey explained, would replace the previous scheme that catered for the educational needs of wards of cocoa farmers in secondary schools until the free senior high school policy intervened.
“We expect to start with 3,000 students. What it means is that by the next year, the number will hit 6,000. By the third year, we’ll now have 9,000 (students). So, what it means is that we’ll be having, by year three, about 9,000 wards of cocoa farmers enjoying this scholarship. So, we’re just going by the no-stress-free policy: what government pays, and then we’ll give a stipend in addition to support them,” Dr Abbey said.
The Ghana COCOBOD Bill, 2026, which is awaiting Presidential assent, introduces new dimensions to the management of the cocoa sector, with a specific sanction regime for the destruction of cocoa trees and cocoa farms. While tree crops such as rubber and teak are adequately protected by relevant laws on them, even when they stand alone in a backyard, it is the first time such a sanction regime has been prescribed to make the destruction of cocoa trees and cocoa farms punishable by the courts.
Dr Abbey said the omission of a sanction regime for the destruction of cocoa trees and cocoa farms was an anomaly, given that the cash crop had been a mainstay of the local economy for 79 years. He also revealed a plan to introduce a pension scheme for cocoa farmers as part of the overhaul of the farmer welfare system, stating that COCOBOD would engage consultants to design an appropriate pension scheme for the farmers.
“The issue of farmer pension has been on the books for a very long time. You need their contributions; you need to teach them that the price is gone,” the CEO said.
“You do the age profile of farmers, and you say that if you decide to look at the normal pension route, how many of these farmers will be able to contribute for 15 or 20 years before they are called by God and all that. But we can discuss it,” he added.
“We still need to get a consultant, get actuarial scientists to look at the peculiarities of cocoa farming and try and develop something,” Dr Abbey added.
The COCOBOD CEO said he had discussed the issue of a pension scheme for cocoa farmers during his journalism days, only to find out upon his appointment to his new role that no such scheme existed for cocoa farmers. “I got to work (only) to find out that there is no scheme. And what I then found out was that there was supposed to be a contributory scheme. On the part of the farmers, they didn’t accept that they should contribute (to the scheme). They thought that the government was going to pay everything for them,” he said.
“So we need to still find something which will take into cognisance the peculiarity of cocoa farming and then design something. So we are not going to say that because we didn’t work, we’re giving up on it. We should still try and explore the possibility of finding something that will suit the sector and implement it,” Dr Abbey added.
The new COCOBOD law provides a new path for the board, with both the senior and the junior staff represented. While the previous law issued a slot to the staff of the company, conflict emerged over which category of staff should get that slot. Dr Abbey said given that the two groups represented different interests, the new law provided both groups with separate slots on the board, with cocoa farmers also represented for the first time.
