Yaounde, March 27 - High international prices are fuelling a boom in cocoa cultivation in eastern Cameroon which could help the central African country beat its production target of 200,000 tonnes by 2010, officials said on Thursday.
Jerome Mvondo, general manager of Cameroon's Cocoa Development Company (SODECAO), said the creation of new cocoa plantations in eastern Cameroon was outstripping the supply of seeds.
Some 120 hectares of new cocoa fields were planted in 2007 in the east -- Cameroon's fourth largest growing region with just five percent of its national production -- and 500 hectares more are being created this year.
Cameroon produces around 180,000 tonnes a year of cocoa and ranks fourth in world cocoa production, following a disastrous liberalisation of the sector in the early 1990s.
"We were amazed by what we saw in the East province. Almost every family in the region has now taken to growing cocoa and those who have not done so complain of lack of cultivable land," Mvondo told reporters after a tour of the region last week.
"If this trend ... continues in the East, as is also the case in the South province, I foresee our national production hitting the 200,000 tonnes mark and even going beyond by 2010," Mvondo said.
He expressed hope that Cameroon could one day regain its spot as the world's second largest cocoa producer, behind Ivory Coast. Second-ranked Ghana currently harvests around 650,000 tonnes of beans a year, but aims to boost that to 1 million by 2010.
Mvondo, whose company works with the Agriculture Ministry to promote a return to cocoa cultivation, said demand for improved cocoa seedlings outstripped supplies of 600,000 plants.
Eastern Cameroon was one of the regions hardest hit by a prolonged economic crisis in the 1990s following a slump in commodities prices and the liberalisation of coffee and cocoa production. Many farmers abandoned cocoa for production of timber or staple foods.
According to statistics published by the Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Board (CCIB), South-West province is Cameroon's leading producer with 50 percent of its crop, followed by the Centre with 30, and the South with 15 percent.
The cocoa season runs from August 1 to July 31, with the peak harvesting and marketing period being November to January.
Before the country started exporting crude oil in 1977, cocoa and coffee were the mainstay of the economy.