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Accra - Which ever way you eat yours, the next time you sink your teeth into a Cadbury’s Cream Egg be assured that a local Ghanaian cocoa farmer will be taking home a bite of the profits.

Cadbury, the world's leading confectionery company, announced in Accra, Ghana, today the establishment of the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Ghanaian Government and other partners, in an initiative designed to secure the sustainable livelihoods of a million farmers in cocoa-growing communities across Ghana, India, Indonesia and the Caribbean.

Cadbury is to invest seed funding of US$2 million (£1 million) in 2008 to establish the Partnership, with annual funding levels rising to US$10 million (£5 million) by 2010. Seventy percent of the funds will be invested in small farming communities in Ghana, which provides the cocoa beans for Cadbury's UK chocolate including Cadbury Dairy Milk, Wispa, Flake, Creme Egg and Buttons. The announcement marks the centenary of Cadbury Brothers’ trading partnership with Ghana.

With current cocoa yields hitting only 40 percent of their potential in the African country, the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership is designed to improve the income of cocoa farmers by helping them increase their yields and produce top quality beans, introduce new sources of rural income through microfinance and business support, and invest in community-led development from schools and libraries to biodiversity protection projects and wells for clean water.

The pioneering public-private model will be led from the grassroots up, with farmers, non-governmental organisations, governments and international agencies including the United Nations working together to determine how best to spend the money and turn plans into sustainable action.

Announcing the partnership, Matt Shattock, President of Cadbury Britain, Ireland, the Middle East and Africa, said: “Sustainable cocoa production is vital to Cadbury’s commercial success: not simply the supply of our most important ingredient, but guaranteeing a reliable, long term source of the right quality cocoa, produced to the high standards our business, customers and our consumers expect.”

With its development expertise and longstanding experience of working with partners in Ghana, UNDP will help to maximize the effectiveness of Cadbury’s investments over the next 10 years.

Welcoming the initiative, UNDP’s Resident Representative in Ghana, Daouda Touré, said: “UNDP strives to promote inclusive, sustainable development, where everyone benefits as a country gets to grips with fighting poverty. With this new win-win approach developed with Cadbury, where both the small producer and the consumer benefit, we hope to show just how effectively sustainable cocoa production can be in generating improved opportunities for local farmers, conserving the environment and building a brighter future for younger generations.”

James Boateng, Managing Director of Cadbury Ghana, added: “In the centenary of our relationship with the cocoa farming industry in Ghana, we are incredibly proud to launch the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership in Accra today which we hope will have a lasting impact on the lives of cocoa farmers.”

“I grew up on a cocoa farm, and owe my education to the prosperity which cocoa brought to my family, and look forward to contributing to the future of cocoa farming. In Ghana there is a phrase 'Coco obatanpa' which means 'Cocoa is a good parent; it looks after you.'  We hope with this initiative Cadbury and our partners can be a good parent to cocoa.”