Côte d'Ivoire launched its 2026–2027 cocoa marketing campaign on September 1, 2026, introducing a new traceability system designed to track cocoa from the farm to export. This initiative, mandated by the Coffee-Cocoa Council (CCC), requires all producers to use a card equipped with a chip similar to those on bank cards. The card is intended to secure transactions and provide a clear record of the cocoa’s journey, ensuring compliance with the European Union’s upcoming deforestation regulation, which will take effect on January 1, 2027. This measure is part of a broader reform effort initiated by President Alassane Ouattara in 2011, aimed at better regulating the cocoa and coffee sectors after the liberalization of the 2000s and increasing the income that reaches growers. For the 2026–2027 campaign, the government has set the farmgate price for cocoa beans at 1,200 CFA francs (about 1.82 euros) per kilogram, the same as in the intermediate campaign in March 2026. This is a significant drop from the peak of 2,800 CFA francs at the start of the 2025–2026 campaign, which had reached a historical high due to increased global demand in 2024–2025. The Ivorian Minister of Agriculture, Bruno Nabagné Koné, explained that the current price aims to ensure financial and budgetary sustainability, despite the lingering effects of challenges from the previous campaign. Côte d'Ivoire remains the world’s largest cocoa producer, with an estimated 2.0 to 2.1 million tons of cocoa produced during the 2025–2026 campaign. This represents a significant rebound from the 1.68 million tons produced in the 2024–2025 campaign, which accounted for 35.8% of global production. The cocoa industry plays a vital role in the Ivorian economy, contributing 11.5% to the GDP in 2025 and directly or indirectly employing about 5 million people. In 2024, cocoa represented about 35% of the country’s total exports, with raw beans alone generating around 4 billion dollars. Since 2011, the government has aimed to move away from a model that primarily exported raw cocoa, in which buyer countries controlled the most profitable transformation processes. To increase local value retention, the government has been investing in primary transformation capacities, such as grinding beans into cocoa liquor and butter. In 2024–2025, 39% of cocoa production was ground locally, and the goal is to increase this to 50% by 2030. New processing facilities, such as those opened by Transcao CI and Cacao SA, have boosted the country’s transformation capacity to 1.16 million tons per year, with more expected by the end of the 2026–2027 campaign. However, the production of food ingredients and finished products like chocolate bars remains underdeveloped, and the government now aims to prioritize these stages in the medium term.