The enabling environment of cocoa certification in Ghana

The institutional environment of the cocoa sector in Ghana is influenced by various types of institutions, both formal, informal, and collective or individual. It is those institutions that influence cocoa farmers practices. Facing several economic, social and agricultural challenges, actors in the cocoa sector try to innovate. Hence, the study held during this internship seeks to analyse the institutional environment of cocoa certification, more specifically Fairtrade in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The main issue addressed is the motivations for cocoa farmers to participate in certification, and how those decisions are shaped by institutions. This study follows the Q method thanks to primary and secondary data. The latter was obtained thanks to a literature review and key informant interviews. It is thanks to this data that 31 key actors from a rural community were interviewed in June 2025. The choice was made to use the Q method in order to get a diversity of opinions from different types of respondents. The findings highlight two main factors: a pragmatic and innovation-driven perspective (eg. access to training, access to new technologies) and a market and income-driven one (eg. access to premiums, new market). In both cases it characterizes the institutional environment as formal and individual but when collective it is informal. Moreover, the producers' goal are to improve their living and working conditions through new and modern practices. On another hand, our findings illustrates how cultural aspects and traditions are not key motivations and how Agricultural Innovation System (AIS) are not visible or tangible by the local actors.