In the 10th year of its existence, Tony’s Chocolonely’s revenue doubled to almost 18 million euros. The ropes are now also available for sale in the US, Germany and Sweden. The promise ‘100 percent slave-free’ has declined over the years to ‘100% slave-free’. Tony’s Chocolonely does everything to produce his own chocolate responsibly, but the cocoa brunch as a whole appears to be stubborn. In the production of cocoa in Africa, more misunderstandings are now discovered than in the past. The Tulane University of New Orleans conducted last year research in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, two major cocoa-producing countries. More than two million children appear to be involved in the production of cocoa. By far most of them perform (forced) child labor and work in hazardous conditions, for example with large hood knives. The numbers of children, both in absolute and relative terms, are higher than in the previous survey of 2010. In the Ivory Coast, the percentage of children working in dangerous conditions increased by thirty percent. The US researchers mainly attributed this increase to the rising production of cocoa, which is a result of growing demand.
