大象传媒

A crash in global prices, and cocoa rotting in the warehouses. What's gone wrong in Ivory Coast? We have an exclusive report from Tamasin Ford on the biggest cocoa crisis the country has seen in recent memory. Also we consider what it implies about the commodity dependence of Africa generally. 40 out of 54 African countries rely on three or fewer agricultural or mineral products for most of their foreign earnings. Given the global slump in commodity prices in recent years, Isabelle Ramdoo of the UN's African Minerals Development Centre says that is not sustainable. And finally, our regular commentator, Jeremy Wagstaff of Reuters, considers a curious vulnerability of the global shipping industry - no, it's not the excessive number of super-tankers, the slowdown in trade, protectionist rhetoric... it's the hopeless software systems that mean that many private shipments simply get lost altogether.
(Picture: Cocoa pod cut in half; Credit: Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images)