Supply Chain as a Design Medium: The Case of West African Cocoa

Abstract

In this master’s level thesis, I look at supply chains as a medium for design and examine the concept of supply chain design within global political economy. Focusing on cocoa grown and harvested in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, I consider how each country has used cocoa to pursue developmental and political agendas as part of their own world-making project in a post-colonial context. Facing market liberalization pressures, both countries have loosened aspects of the regulatory systems in their cocoa supply chains, however infrastructural chokepoints and the structures of these supply chains challenge traceability of cocoa beans from farm to export, at times obscuring information on the origin and production processes of cocoa beans, such as fair trade and organic certified beans. With pressures increasing to ensure that cocoa beans do not originate on deforested protected land or through illegal labor practices, I look at how spaces of friction emerge in the current arrangement of cocoa supply chains as different agendas of national governments, multinational corporations, Western regulators, and West African communities conflict. I conclude considering the possibility of design interventions along these cocoa supply chains and opportunities for bottom-up initiatives originating in Ghanaian and Ivorian cocoa communities to shape their own futures.