Useless certifications? Asymmetric relationships between cooperatives, standards, and cocoa smallholders in Côte d’Ivoire[Des certifications inutiles ? Les relations asymétriques entre coopératives, labels et cacaoculteurs en Côte d'Ivoire]

Certification schemes, including Fairtrade, rely on small-scale cooperatives and "committed" partnerships to promote sustainable livelihoods. The cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire has been marked by the impoverishment of farmers, who distrust cooperatives. The expected benefits of certifications, including the Fairtrade one, appear to be low. The aim of this article is to open the "black box" of 80 cooperatives: the composition of their management teams, their education level, and the management of premiums. The majority of cooperatives result in fact simply from the "conversion" of pre-existing private trading companies into cooperatives. Hence, no real collective identity or cooperative values are shared. The conditions for the collective, democratic management of the profits derived from so-called sustainability standards are not met at the level of the cooperative. Therefore, the credibility of those standards is undermined.