‘They will do it legally or illegally’: Interview with James Giahyue on Liberia’s cocoa boom

Filed 12h ago · Via Mongabay · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Vahe Martirosyan · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A cacao price spike in 2024 and a land crunch in Côte d'Ivoire have pushed migrants and investors into southeastern Liberia's rainforest, where handshake deals with local communities are fueling rapid, unregulated plantation expansion.

Journalist James Giahyue describes deforestation, deadly land conflicts, and demographic upheaval as Burkinabè and Ivorian migrants move in — alongside politicians like Grand Gedeh's superintendent, accused of seizing over 500 acres of community land without following legal process. Eight of the county's nine community forests have already converted to cocoa; only one, Bloquia, has refused.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A law that grants land rights but never surveys the land is not a policy, it's a waiting room for conflict. The government insists it draws lines around protected forests while its own agencies quietly erase those lines — which is a fairly efficient way to have it both ways.

Source: Read the original at Mongabay → Scored: Grim League · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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