Top: An FDA vehicle transports Burkinabés suspected of criminal trespassing in a community forest and a logging concession to the Zwedru Correction Palace. The DayLight/Varney Kamara

By Varney Kamara

ZWEDRU – Thirty-one Burkinabé cocoa farmers were jailed for allegedly clearing forestry concessions in Grand Gedeh County to plant cocoa.

The men, with ages ranging from teenagers to the 50s, were rounded up by rangers of the Forestry Development Authority (FDA) during a routine patrol. They were recently arrested at two forestry contract areas.

“The Burkinabés are damaging these places with cocoa farming. We met them brushing in the park. We also caught some of them cutting demarcation in the FMCs,” Yei Neagor, FDA’s head for that region, told The DayLight at the Zwedru City Magisterial Court. Pictures shared by the FDA show the man setting up camps and setting trees ablaze.

“I can tell you that the situation is alarming. They are destroying the forest. It is on a massive scale,” added Neagor.

The suspects were arrested in the Gbarzon District at two locations. Fifteen were picked up at Marbo 1 Community Forest and 16 at a dormant concession known as Forest Management Contract Area K or FMC ‘K’.

They had been arraigned at the FDA’s regional office in Zwedru and later taken to the police station before being forwarded to court. They have been charged with criminal trespassing and criminal mischief, court documents show. They were jailed at the Zwedru Correction Palace after failing to post bail.

‘The land belongs to us’

In an interview with The DayLight, the suspects admitted to the charges but blamed their Liberian hosts for the situation.

“We fell into this problem because our host did not show us the actual demarcation of the boundary,” said Soré Sayouba, a spokesman for the Burkinabés.

Sayouba, 57, said he and the other men crossed the Ivorian border into Grand Gedeh through local people or hosts. Immigration records list Bamba Paye, a Gbarzon resident, as one of their hosts.

Paye denies any wrongdoing, saying his family farmed on the controversial land for decades.  “I don’t understand why they arrested my Burkinabé workers because my parents planted cocoa and orange way back on this land. In our traditional setting, life crops represent inheritance,” Paye said via phone.

“The land belongs to us.”

The suspects have been freed on bond and are expected to reappear in court on Tuesday.

Cocoa court cases

The case adds to several lawsuits involving Burkinabés, the FDA and individuals in Grand Gedeh, regarding cocoa cultivation.  

Burkinabés began flocking into Liberia in the 2010s, after a cross-border agreement between then-President Sirleaf and Ivoirian leader Alhassan Ouattara, according to immigration authorities.

“From that time, we noticed that people started coming in. But they were not coming as agriculturists. Now, as we speak, they are all along the Cavalla belt,” said Alex Kpakolo, Grand Gedeh’s Assistant Comptroller of Immigration.

Last year, France 24 reported 25,000, capitalizing on Liberia’s weak law enforcement, large rainforests and high cocoa prices.

Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, has lost 90 percent of its forest to “brown gold” farming in the last six decades, the report said.

This trend continues in Liberia, which lost 386,000 hectares of primary forests between 2002 and 2024, according to Global Forest Watch.

This story was a production of the Community of Forest and Environmental Journalists of Liberia (CoFEJ).