A two-day workshop (March 13 and 14) was held at the La Falaise Hotel in Yaoundé as part of the European Union's Sustainable Cocoa initiative implemented by FAO in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture. forests and several other stakeholders.
Today Cameroon is positioned 5th in the world among cocoa producers, in 2021 it joined the dialogue spaces as an observer before starting discussions between May 2022 and March 2023 having created its sustainable cocoa committee in November 2022 by joint decision of Minader and Mincommerce.
In consultation with the private sector and public partners involved in the Cocoa value chain, Cameroon has made commitments aligned with the three pillars of the EU Sustainable Cocoa initiative which are consistent with SND30 with the axis priority production at least 6% of the world market.
This project will provide reliable and up-to-date information on the situation of the cocoa orchard and its impact on forests for the monitoring and evaluation of public policies and private initiatives regarding the sustainability of the cocoa sector. It will strengthen the capacities of national actors to use remote sensing and geomatics tools for Cameroon's compliance with EU regulation on deforestation which will come into force by the end of 2024.
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Dr Aurelie C. Shapiro, national forest Monitoring/forestry division de la FAO
« You know with the new European regulations, we must determine that cocoa plantations are not in deforested areas after 2020, so we will send the necessary tools to work with data, experts and partners to help us determine legality and the illegality of plantations. We have this very difficult aspect which is agroforestry which is a cocoa plantation mixed with trees. This is a big challenge that we hope to achieve with new artificial intelligence methods, new satellite data to allow us to map where this Cocoa orchard is and its entry into the legal framework of the European Union. We must use slightly more innovative methods which have never been tested on this scale, we will use machine learning algorithms and technical resources to try to map Cameroonian Cocoa ».
Dr Narcisse Ghislain Olinga, deputy director of commercial exchanges at Mincommerce
« As you know, the European Union has published a number of processes on deforestation which aim to only allow cocoa that enters the European Union market not to come from deforested areas after 2020. For this we comes down to putting certain devices in place to demonstrate that our Cocoa complies with the required provisions. Today's workshop allows us to develop a map of Cameroonian orchards and forests which will allow us to demonstrate to our European partners that our Cocoa does not come from deforested areas and which has environmental virtues, this requires an ecological practice bonus ».
Philippe MAYAUX, Minister Advisor Team Leader Environment, Agriculture, Climate Change and EU Energy Cooperation
« It is to have good quality cocoa that can integrate into the European commercial market because it is in our interest. The European Union wants good relations with Cameroonian cocoa. This workshop is very important because it will allow us to know exactly where it is grown. For us the key message is to show that cocoa cultivation and biodiversity are compatible. We need the state of play, where good practices are located ».
Clément Noumsi
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