Abstract
The cocoa supply chain is among the top 5 agricultural commodities traded in international markets, with an estimated value approaching $200 billion in 2026, 60% of which comes from the Ivory Coast and Ghana. However, chocolate seems to be truly a guilty pleasure. Currently, the whole cocoa supply chain is unsustainable and unfair for the farmers who earn $0.5 per day on average, which is below the poverty threshold set by the World Bank at $2 per day. More so, a set of unwanted externalities plague the cocoa supply chain like child exploitation, illiteracy, political instability, corruption, deforestation, and lack of information. Supply chain equity is currently a utopic goal in many global agricultural supply chains. The attempts to improve supply chain equity include Fair Trade, Organic Movement, Rainforest/UTZ certification, and voluntary corporate commitments such as Tony’s Choco Lonely. Although notable improvements are made, they are primarily local and circumscribed, and the problem from a systemic perspective still needs to be solved.