Now it's chocolate: prices hit records as Ghana, Ivory Coast and China cut out Western firms

Ghana and Ivory Coast, the two biggest suppliers of cocoa to global markets.
“This is where the money goes, in the cocoa supply chain.
Retailers and taxes takes 44%.
Chocolate manufacturers take another 35%.
Cocoa Processors gets for 7.6%.
That adds up to approximately 87%.
Ghana and Ivory Coast Farmers get only 6.6% of the global share of their own cocoa on the global market.
If Ghana and the Ivory Coast can just move over, to the left (cocoa
processing), and take that piece of the pie, they can more than double their revenues from cocoa bean production in each country.”
— This is absolutely right. If Ghana and Ivory Coast cocoa farmers can just move over to the left of the pie chart (cocoa processing), they can double the cocoa supply revenues.
Ghana and Ivory Coast need to add value and gain control of more parts of the production and supply chain of their cocoa.

Natural resources economies, which is the majority of countries in Africa, want to move up the supply chains, and capture more of their natural resources revenues and profits for themselves.
But, the middlemen of western multinational companies are reaping most of the profits of all of African natural resources and wealth.
The strategy for Africa now is to pivot
away from western multinational companies, and toward a more friendly business partners, like China. Africa wants to do more of the value-added work themselves, and to cut out the middlemen of the western multinational companies and firms.
Cocoa production in West Africa is forecast to hit record numbers, and both the Ivory Coast and Ghana, want to move up the supply chain, and capture the profits and revenues that they are exporting to foreign multinational companies who are just buying raw beans (for dirt cheap) and processing them in Europe and in the United States.
By doing this, processing their own cocoa in-country, Ghana and Ivory Coast can double their export revenues and profits of their cocoa and other natural resources.
This is why African countries, like Ghana and Ivory Coast, want to expand their investment portfolio, like Chinese investment in their cocoa production supply chain industry.

Ghana and Ivory Coast want to Invest and build cocoa processing plants and factories.
The main reason Ghana or Ivory Coast can't make chocolate is because they don't have access to the cocoa supply chain, such as the milk supply chain to make chocolate on a large scale.
Beginning in 2019, Ghana and Ivory Coast partnered with Chinese firms to help process their cocoa in-country, and to sell their end product directly to Chinese companies, thus removing the middlemen of the western multinational chocolate brand companies, in the United States and Europe.
This will help reduce the exploitation that cocoa farmers and cocoa suppliers are suffering at the hands of western multinational chocolate brand companies, in the United States and Europe, especially in Switzerland.
Western multinational chocolate producing companies, like the ones in Switzerland, are already getting 75% (3/4) or more of all the global revenue and profits of the cocoa supply chain, just by importing the raw beans into Switzerland and doing the rest themselves. There is no incentive for Switzerland and other western multinational chocolate producing companies, to push more of the processing of cocoa in the West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast.
Swiss multinational chocolate producing companies have come out and said—this strategy, the strategy of African processing their own natural raw materials into finish products, will be a threat to the Swiss chocolate industry’s revenues profit margins and its raw materials supply.
This is the report from 2021: “If the strategy of Ghana and Ivory Coast is successful they will be competing directly with Swiss commodity firms and producers”.
Both China and West Africa, in this case of chocolate, are looking at the profits and revenues being earned by speculators and investors on Wall Street, and by the western multinational branding chocolate companies in Europe and the United States, who just buy raw cocoa beans dirt cheap, and import it into their western countries, then processed the cocoa beans in their countries and put them in a nice package, and resell it in Europe, and America, and the whole world, thus taking over three-fourths (75%) of all the cocoa supply chain revenues and profits worldwide. This is the exploitative colonial business system that western multinational companies are using in Africa that has kept Africa poor centuries.

The strategy of Africa processing and adding value to its own natural resources and wealth is a threat to western multinational companies revenues and profit margins and its raw material supply.
The cocoa situation in Ghana and Ivory Coast is a microcosm of the imperialist colonial economic and business system that is being used all over Africa by western multinational companies and firms.
For example, the uranium situation in Niger. France was paying 0.8 euros per unit of Niger’s uranium to be imported into France, but at the same time, France was selling Niger’s uranium on the global market for 200 euro per unit of uranium.