College
graduate Omatayo Adeniyi stands in a humid tropical forest of southwest Nigeria
and explains why he chose cocoa farming over a white collar job in the city.
“There
is money in the ground. The future is bright. I hope to make one tonne of cocoa
by next year,” he says from his farm in Ondo State.
Such
optimism has for decades been rare among Nigeria’s cocoa farmers: Many
abandoned their fields and moved to cities in search of alternative work after
commodity prices collapsed in the mid-1980s and the country’s booming oil
industry siphoned investment away from agriculture.
But
years of focus on oil revenues has left Nigeria with a lack of
