1. Why is working with ofi important to Mondelēz International's cocoa sustainability strategy (and what value do you see in working together at origin)?
At Mondelēz International, cocoa is an ingredient key to our business. In our cocoa supply chain, ofi is one of our long-standing collaborators. By the end of 2025, we have reached around 37,000 cocoa farmers across six cocoa-producing countries together with ofi as part of the Cocoa Life program. Working with ofi is important to us because of their on-the-ground presence and deep expertise in cocoa origins, enabling us to collaborate with experts in various countries. Working together allows us to combine Mondelēz's cocoa sustainability ambitions and scale with ofi's supply chain infrastructure to help tackle systemic challenges more effectively than either company could alone.
2. From Mondelez's perspective, where has the work with ofi made the most meaningful progress for farmers, communities, climate or nature?
Throughout our many years of working with ofi, we’ve collaborated on Cocoa Life program initiatives across various countries. For example:
In Brazil, we’ve done important work together to help protect and restore forests and empower women cocoa farmers. Together with ofi and others, we launched a project designed to help farmers in the Brazilian Amazon adopt cocoa-based agroforestry practices on degraded areas, seeking to contribute to landscape restoration and improved livelihoods. As part of this project, around 2,900 hectares of degraded areas have been restored between 2019 and 2023. We also worked with ofi to launch the Cacau Delas program, an initiative aimed at empowering around 200 women in Brazil's cocoa supply chain by providing farmer trainings, with the goal of expanding women’s participation in cocoa farming and entrepreneurship and building networks of women leaders in cocoa-growing regions.
In Ecuador, we work with ofi to provide farmer trainings, incentivize agroforestry practices, distribute cocoa and non-cocoa seedlings and help set up pruning groups for selected farms to help improve cocoa productivity.
In Indonesia, our work with ofi aims to help cocoa farmers revitalize cocoa productivity and build more climate resilience through initiatives focused on soil health improvement, tree rehabilitation, tree seedling nurseries and irrigation systems to support farmers during dry seasons.
In West Africa, our work with ofi has allowed us to work with Cocoa Life registered farmers in four countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Ghana, and Nigeria). As part of a new pilot project, we provide certain incentives to help encourage farming families to consider professional labor support that could potentially improve good agricultural practices. Essentially, participating farming families would receive funds to help cover professional labor support, with a portion remaining for investment in other household or farm needs. Participating households can also receive an incentive to help send children to school. Together with ofi, we supported around 2,300 farming families in Côte d’Ivoire with cash incentives in 2025.
3. What will it take for companies like Mondelēz International and ofi to accelerate impact at scale across global supply chains over the next five years?
We believe collaboration with supply chain organizations and other sector participants is key to addressing the interconnected challenges in the cocoa supply chain. Our experience implementing the Cocoa Life program across diverse geographies for more than a decade has reinforced our view that changing systems takes time and requires broad collaboration across the sector. We believe that focusing on the quality of project implementation is essential to support meaningful outcomes. We are working with ofi and others to explore new collaborations, and we encourage others across the cocoa sector and beyond to explore ambitious public-private collaborations that seek to address systemic challenges and seek to integrate sustainable sourcing practices into end-to-end business practices.
