Cameroon, Africa's fifth-largest cocoa producer with about 290,000 tonnes a year, is entering the home stretch before the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) fully applies to its cocoa sector, starting with the 2026-2027 harvest.
The regulation, in force since June 2023, requires exporters to the European Union to prove their products do not come from land deforested after December 2020. The stakes are direct for Cameroon: the EU absorbs nearly 40% of its cocoa exports, a vital market for around 600,000 smallholder farmers.
A national workshop assessing Cameroon's readiness for the EUDR was held in July 2026, bringing together the Ministry of Commerce, international experts and industry representatives. Authorities and industry players are now working on a plot geolocation system, a central requirement of the traceability Brussels demands.
Cameroon holds one advantage over Côte d'Ivoire or Ghana: less advanced cocoa-driven deforestation, particularly in the West and Centre regions. But the fragmentation of farms, often small and family-run, complicates the rapid rollout of reliable traceability.
The financial stakes are far from trivial: exclusion from the European market would represent an estimated annual loss of more than 200 billion CFA francs, directly hitting the incomes of hundreds of thousands of farming families.
For the sector, the regulatory constraint could also act as an accelerator: with sufficient financial and technical support, EUDR compliance offers a chance to modernize farming practices that have changed little in decades.
