FORUM – Cameroon’s Readiness on Compliance with the EUDR

Cameroon is accelerating efforts to ensure its cocoa and coffee sectors meet the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) requirements ahead of the regulation’s enforcement in late 2025. A high-level forum on Cameroon’s readiness for EUDR compliance was held in Yaoundé, jointly organized by the Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Council (CICC) and the Ministry of Trade. Attended by the Minister of Trade Mr. Luc Magloire MBARGA ATANGANA, the Minister of Women’s Empowerment and Family, the Minister of Forestry, as well as the EU Ambassador to Cameroon and representatives from international partners (EU, GIZ, FAO, EFI) and leading cocoa exporters, the forum underscored a nationwide commitment to sustainable, deforestation-free agriculture.

GeoShare Platform: Ensuring Inclusive Traceability

CICC unveiled GeoShare, a new digital platform designed to pool geolocation data of cocoa and coffee farms. Through GeoShare, large exporting companies will contribute their extensive farm geodata, and verified smaller exporters can retrieve or query this information to verify the origin of their cocoa. This collaborative data-sharing solution ensures that even exporters who lack resources to map farms can still provide the required proof of deforestation-free sourcing. According to CICC officials, the platform will allow EU buyers to request the GPS coordinates of cocoa plantations and then anonymously query the database held by industry operators. Since most cocoa farms in Cameroon have already been mapped by major exporters, the system can rapidly confirm whether a given batch of cocoa beans comes from compliant (non-deforested) land. This innovation was praised at the forum as a model public-private partnership: it leverages data from six major cocoa exporters (including Telcar, Olam’s subsidiary Ofi, and others) under an agreement signed in August 2024. By facilitating data sharing, Cameroon is protecting smallholders from being left behind – enabling small producers to maintain access to the EU market despite the stringent traceability demands.

Progress in Mapping and Capacity Building

Cameroon’s preparation for EUDR compliance is well advanced. As noted during the forum, over 90% of the country’s cocoa-growing areas have been georeferenced (mapped with GPS coordinates), forming a robust foundation for traceability. In fact, as of late 2024 about 260,000 metric tons – approximately 80% of Cameroon’s cocoa output – already met the EU’s traceability criteria, and officials are optimistic about reaching 100% compliance by the time the regulation becomes applicable in 2026. Alongside mapping, nationwide awareness campaigns and training programs have been rolled out. The CICC, with support from partners, launched outreach in all major cocoa and coffee regions to educate farmers on the EUDR’s requirements and sustainable farming practices. These efforts have already engaged thousands of smallholder farmers, ensuring they understand not only what the new EU rules entail but also how to adapt their agricultural practices and record-keeping to meet them. Stakeholders from the public and private sectors – including local cooperatives and international organizations – have joined forces in these sessions to answer farmers’ questions and to demonstrate tools like land-use maps for monitoring compliance. This broad engagement has bolstered confidence that Cameroon’s producers, large and small alike, will be ready to certify their cocoa as “deforestation-free” and legally produced, as required by the EUDR.

Cameroon’s collaborative, data-driven strategy sets an example by ensuring that no farmer is left behind in the journey toward a deforestation-free cocoa supply chain. All stakeholders – from government ministers to small growers – are moving in unison to safeguard both the country’s forests and its access to global markets through EUDR compliance.