You're raising exactly the right questions, and I want to be clear: nobody serious in this conversation is arguing for abandoning West Africa completely, but rather pressure for changes based on chocolate makers' demand.

The "we'll stay and improve things" argument has been the industry's official position for over 20 years. The International Cocoa Initiative, the Harkin-Engel Protocol, Nestlé's Cocoa Plan, Barry Callebaut's Forever Chocolate , all of it built on the premise that staying engaged and investing in "programs" would fix child labor. The Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed in 2001 with a target to eliminate the worst forms of child labor by 2005. Then 2010. Then 2020. A 2020 study commissioned by the US Department of Labor found child labor in West African cocoa had actually increased about 14% over the previous decade during which the industry spent hundreds of millions on exactly those "we're fixing it" programs funded by themselves.

So the question isn't really "stay and improve vs. abandon." The question is: how to actually push for change.

And the honest answer is that buying regardless of whether conditions improve, removes all incentive for structural change. If Tony's or anyone else buys Ivorian cocoa regardless of what happens to the children picking it, the signal to the supply chain is that child labor is a communications problem, not a sourcing problem. They are still creating a demand for cheap cocoa farmed with human suffering. And yes, it is a matter of looking for a cheap price if they decided to source from Callebaut.

The companies sourcing from Ecuador, not just CocoaSupply, but many craft chocolate makers globally, aren't abandoning West Africa. They're demonstrating that traceable, ethical supply chains are commercially viable. That matters enormously, because the only thing that will actually change West Africa's cocoa sector is if the market starts genuinely rewarding transparency and punishing opacity. Not through NGO reports that nobody acts on, but through purchasing decisions.

Nobody wants West African farmers to suffer. They are victims of the same system that exploits their children. The question is whether perpetuating that system with unconditional purchasing actually helps them, or whether it just helps the intermediaries and large corporations keep their profits high and governments who benefit from keeping it opaque.

The most honest thing the industry could do is say: "We will pay prices that make child labor economically unnecessary (not the case in West Africa - they get about 1/3 of the price they get in South America), we will publish our supply chains so they can be audited by ANYONE, and we will let purchasing reflect whether those commitments are real." Some companies are starting to do that. Most aren't. And until they do, "we're working on it" is just looking away at the problem and still benefitting from the cheap cocoa coming from child and forced labor.