Assessing the effectiveness of services provided by Cocoa Board (COCOBOD): Ghana's success story
Speaker: Dr Shashidhara Kolavalli, IFPRI – International Food Policy Research Institute; Dr Marcella Vigneri, CEDIL – Centre of Excellence for Development Impact and Learning
Chair: Prof Christopher Gilbert, John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
Panellists: Gareth Austin, Cambridge University;
Stephanie Barrientos, University of Manchester;
Kristy Leissle, University of Washington;
Colin Poulton, School of Oriental and African Studies - SOAS
Ghana was able in the 2000s to more than double its production of cocoa in a sector that was reformed in the early 1980s without liberalizing markets, contrary to Washington Consensus prescriptions. The authors examine the factors that contributed Ghana’s success; the effectiveness of services that the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) provides by retaining a portion of the producer revenues in the tradition of marketing boards, including their impact on effective supply of inputs and service; and Ghana’s role in maintaining quality of exports as a strategy to position itself in the global value chain.
About speakers
Shashidhara Kolavalli received his PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, and a Masters in Economics from the Wichita State University at Wichita, KS. He was on the faculty at the Indian Institute of management, Ahmedabad, India and served as a resource economist at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid tropics, Hyderabad, India. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow in the Ghana Strategy Support Program based in Accra, Ghana. His current research interests are market reforms, agricultural transformation, and development processes.
Marcella Vigneri is Research Fellow at CEDIL (Centre of Excellence in Development Impact and Learning) at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She did original work on cocoa in Ghana for her DPhil at Oxford University and has collaborated for over ten years with IFPRI’s Ghana Strategy Support Programme on various research studies on cocoa. Marcella previously worked for Oxfam GB, the Overseas Development Institute, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and Oxford University, and acted as a consultant for the World Bank, the International Cocoa Initiative, and the Understanding Children's Work Programme.