In the heart of West Africa, where the world’s finest cocoa beans are cultivated, Chinese investment has built new processing factories in Ivory Coast and Ghana.

On the outskirts of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s economic capital, China Light Industry Nanning Design Engineering has finished building the nation’s largest cocoa plant and a cocoa bean warehouse.

It comes from one of the two deals the Chinese company signed with Ivory Coast in 2019 to build processing plants. The other is in the southwestern coastal city of San Pedro.

The Chinese government advanced US$199.9 million to build the plants, with each intended to have an annual processing capacity of 50,000 tonnes (55,100 tons).

The company also agreed to build cocoa warehouses in each location, with storage capacity of 140,000 tonnes and 160,000 tonnes. In return, 40 per cent of the output from the two processing plants would be sold to Chinese companies.

Ivory Coast is the world’s largest cocoa bean producer, accounting for about 40 per cent of global cocoa production and exports. The raw cocoa beans – chocolate’s main ingredient – is the country’s major export product.

The chocolate confectionery market generated a revenue of US$133.6 billion in 2024, the German data platform Statista said. According to the International Cocoa Organisation, only 6 per cent of this value reaches cocoa-exporting countries.

Tang Chong, the project manager of the Abidjan cocoa processing plant, told reporters who toured the plant last year the project would improve the cocoa processing capacity of Ivory Coast, and help the country train more skilled workers.