The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Randy Abbey, has come under scrutiny after fact-checking revealed that his claim about
The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Randy Abbey, has come under scrutiny after fact-checking revealed that his claim about a cocoa pricing pledge in the National Democratic Congress’s (NDC) 2024 manifesto was inaccurate.
Randy Abbey, speaking on Joy FM on August 5, 2025, defended the government’s newly announced cocoa producer price of GH¢3,228 per 64kg bag, saying it fulfilled a campaign promise made by the NDC.
He insisted the party’s 2024 manifesto and President John Mahama—both as a candidate and later as president—had pledged to pay cocoa farmers 70% of the Free-On-Board (FOB) price of cocoa.
“I have read the NDC’s manifesto from the first page to the last page, I have not seen any spot price in there. What the NDC promised in the manifesto was 70% (producer price) to the farmer, and that is exactly what has been done,” Randy Abbey said during the interview.
However, GhanaFact’s review of the NDC’s 2024 manifesto, titled “RESETTING GHANA – Jobs, accountability, prosperity”, told a different story. The word “cocoa” appeared 56 times in the 184-page document, with a dedicated section on pages 41 to 43 outlining 14 interventions for the sector under the “Feed Industry Programme.”
The closest the manifesto came to addressing cocoa prices was a pledge under “Promote Cocoa Farmer Welfare and Support,” which stated the party would ensure “regular cocoa price increments in line with world market trends.” Nowhere did the manifesto commit to a 70% share of the FOB price or any fixed percentage for farmers.
During the 2024 campaign, then-candidate John Mahama and some senior NDC figures—including future Finance and Agriculture Ministers—publicly argued that cocoa farmers deserved a much higher rate than the GH¢3,100 per bag set by the then Akufo-Addo administration.
John Mahama himself, in campaign interactions, assured farmers of receiving 70% of the producer price, but that promise was never captured in the written manifesto.
This distinction between verbal campaign promises and formal manifesto commitments is central to GhanaFact’s conclusion.
Their analysis determined that Abbey’s statement was misleading because it conflated public campaign rhetoric with the party’s official written policy document.
The verdict: The claim that the NDC’s 2024 manifesto promised to pay cocoa farmers 70% of the producer price is false.
The official document contained no such commitment, making Abbey’s defence of the new price on that basis inaccurate.
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