Cameroon Renews Cocoa Traceability Partnership With Germany’s Cooko

Cameroon’s National Cocoa and Coffee Board, ONCC, and Cooko, a German company specializing in post-harvest cocoa fermentation and digital traceability, signed a new three-year memorandum of understanding in Douala on September 10, 2026. The agreement replaces one signed in September 2021, but the announcement provided no figures on the results of the first phase and set no numerical targets for the next three years.

The agreement was signed by ONCC Director General Michael Ndoping and Cooko Country Director Epanty Mbanda. According to a statement published by ONCC, it covers cocoa quality, research, data infrastructure, producer incomes, agricultural entrepreneurship and public policy. So-called first-mile traceability is expected to include farm mapping, geospatial monitoring, harvest registration and auditable transaction records.

ONCC did not publish the full agreement alongside the statement. It is therefore unclear whether it includes a budget, funding sources, interim deadlines or performance indicators. ONCC has also not published the number of producers and plots registered since 2021, the total area covered by geolocation data or the volume of cocoa actually tracked.

Ndoping also invited Cooko to join the government’s Sustainable Cocoa Platform. The statement does not say whether data produced by the company will be integrated into a national system or made available to exporters.

Cameroon is already developing land-cover maps and models mapping cocoa-growing areas with the European Union and the FAO to facilitate deforestation-related checks. The first results of that national initiative were presented in November 2025, according to the FAO.

Ntui Center’s Contribution Remains Difficult to Measure

The partnership is expected to continue work already underway at Cooko’s research and fermentation center in Ntui, in Cameroon’s Centre region. The company says freshly harvested beans are placed directly into sealed containers identified with RFID tags and then transported to Ntui for fermentation and drying. The system is intended to link each batch to its farm of origin and retain the data throughout post-harvest processing.

Available data do not show how significant the system is within Cameroon’s cocoa industry. In May 2025, Cooko Chief Executive Ferdinand van Heerden told specialist outlet CocoaRadar that the company had capacity of 15 tons per month and was targeting annual production of 300 tons. If reached, that target would represent about 0.12% of the 247,914 tons of cocoa marketed in Cameroon during the 2025-2026 season. Cooko has not published the volume actually processed at Ntui during that season.

Traceability is becoming increasingly important for access to the EU market as the European Union’s deforestation regulation takes effect. From December 30, 2026, large and medium-sized operators placing cocoa or cocoa-derived products on the EU market will have to show that their supplies do not come from land deforested after December 31, 2020. They will also have to establish that production complies with the laws of the country of origin and submit a due diligence statement. The deadline for most European micro and small enterprises is June 30, 2027, according to the European Commission.

The regulation places these obligations on operators and traders that place the products on the EU market. In practice, Cameroonian exporters and producers will have to provide those operators with plot coordinates, production periods and other information needed to verify the origin of the beans.

Cameroon’s cocoa exports are heavily concentrated in Europe. During the 2025-2026 season, Europe accounted for 84.62% of its cocoa exports. Export volumes fell to 125,469 tons from 192,012 tons in the previous season, a decline of 34.65%, according to ONCC’s season review. That percentage, however, covers Europe, a broader geographic area than the European Union. It confirms the concentration of Cameroon’s cocoa exports in Europe without making it possible to determine precisely the share subject to the regulation.

Cameroon’s Fine Cocoa Status Dates to 2024, but Its Share Is Undetermined

The partnership is also expected to support research into the flavor characteristics of Cameroonian cocoa. ONCC’s statement refers to Cameroon’s recognition as a producer of fine or flavor cocoa under Annex C of the International Cocoa Agreement.

The country already has that recognition. The International Cocoa Council added Cameroon to Annex C of the 2010 Agreement through a decision adopted on April 26, 2024. The International Cocoa Organization says Cameroon exports fine or flavor cocoa, but its expert panel has not yet been able to determine what proportion of the country’s exports falls into that category. Ghana, Malaysia and Venezuela are in the same situation.

The new International Cocoa Agreement, adopted on February 13, 2026, retains that classification. It had not yet entered into force as of September 13, 2026, according to the International Cocoa Organization. Article 39 provides that Annex C and the proportions assigned to countries may be reviewed with the support of an expert panel.

Research at Ntui could therefore help determine the share of Cameroonian cocoa that qualifies as fine or flavor cocoa and document its characteristics, rather than establish Cameroon’s eligibility for the category, which has already been recognized. The recognition does not, however, create any automatic entitlement to a premium. The agreement sets neither a specific price nor a mechanism for compensating producers.

The economic impact of the new partnership will ultimately depend on the number of producers covered, the volumes that can be traced, the compatibility of the data with systems used by exporters and any expansion beyond Ntui. No publicly available results yet show whether the partnership has improved bean quality or the prices received by producers.

Baudouin Enama