A cocoa farmer on the Atewa hills is growing the crop under trees

Susana Afrifa Ankrah grows cocoa under trees on the Atewa Range in south-eastern Ghana, and she credits the forest with rain, cooler ground, and the medicines local herbalists still collect there. Positive News reported on October 22, 2026, that she joined the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Programme soon after it launched in 2019. The program, run by the Forestry Commission and the Cocoa Board, trains farmers in hotspot areas to raise yields without clearing more forest.

She told the reporter that farmers used to clear and burn large areas. She now uses compost and organic fertilizer, and hybrid seed bred to grow under a canopy. She plants native trees, including African mahogany, among the cocoa, and she said the plants thrive when they are not left in the sun. The same support helps people add other forest-friendly work. She listed peppers, pawpaw, plantain, and cassava, and the program also covers beekeeping and small livestock. Asked how much the change was worth to her, she calculated about 80 percent. That is her figure for her own farm. With the program's business advice she has also opened a daycare and a bakery that employ 17 people.

She has 16 grandchildren, and many of them help with the cocoa after school. One daughter, a headmistress, comes too. Positive News said deforestation appears to have slowed in Atewa, and also that a World Bank study still found forest loss elsewhere in Ghana. Ankrah's account is one farmer's harvest and the trees she kept. It is not a national forest inventory.