The MASO Story

Ghana and the great chocolate gap

Unemployment amongst rural youth in Ghana is high and increasing. With few prospects for gainful, meaningful employment in their communities, youth are migrating to urban centres in search of a better life, only to find equally challenging conditions, but now without the support of their families.

At the same time, cocoa production is Ghana’s largest agricultural activity; it accounts for 8% of GDP and supports approximately 6.3 million people (30% of Ghana’s population including 800,000 smallholder farmers). It generates more than US$2 billion in annual bean sales, yet output is declining due to a number of factors, whilst the demand for cocoa and chocolate products keeps growing every year. The ‘Great Chocolate Gap’ is starting to look very real; we call it Ghana’s great opportunity for the next generation.

The next generation of cocoa farmers and entrepreneurs

The MASO youth farmer and entrepreneur incubation programme seeks to create attractive, exciting, local employment opportunities in cocoa by demonstrating how cocoa farming and its associated enterprises can allow the youth to have productive, fulfilling and rewarding lives, either as a viable farmer or an entrepreneur in cocoa growing communities or a mixture of both to generate decent incomes. At the same time, the steps taken here will help support and rejuvenate a vital sector of the Ghanaian economy.

MASO is one of the four programmes under the Youth Forward Initiative which is supported by The MasterCard Foundation. The Youth Forward Initiative seeks to provide sustainable employment opportunities in the agriculture and construction sectors for young people in Ghana and Uganda.