The Dynamics of Civil Society Organisations and Cooperative Societies around Cocoa Governance Based on North-South Cooperation in Côte d'Ivoire

Abstract

The cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire has around 3,000 cooperatives, whose stated objective is to fight for an improvement in the living conditions of producers by acting for a better marketing price for their produce. Despite their large numbers, these cooperatives struggle to integrate and influence decision-making bodies so that the needs of producers can be taken into account. It is against this backdrop that two non-governmental organisations, INADES [ ], and INKOTA-Netzwerk, launched a collaborative initiative in 2019 involving international civil society organisations, human rights organisations and cooperatives, with a view to helping them build an advocacy framework to have a greater impact on decision-making in the sector through the establishment in 2020, of the "Ivorian platform for sustainable cocoa". And this desire to bring together agricultural cooperatives as well as the Ivorian civil society (south) and their partners (north) so that they can play their full part in the decision-making process within this sector has been the subject of a study. The results, findings, observations and information gathered as part of this research are set out in this article. The data was collected through documentary research and semi-directive interviews with Inades-Formation managers, civil society organisations that are members of the platform, cooperative group managers and trade union structure managers. In terms of results, the pooling of synergies between civil society organisations in the north and south, which began in 2020 under the slogan "Ivorian platform for sustainable cocoa", has led to the development and publication of an advocacy guide. This activity has also helped improve the administrative and economic organisation of cooperative structures. In addition, the information and capacity-building sessions carried out by international civil society organisations have enabled cooperatives to revitalise their influence in the process of political and ......