In Ivory Coast, a battle to save cocoa-ravaged forests

Traditional chief Phillipe Ipou Kouadio stands next to his truck in the Ivorian cocoa farming village of Djigbadji, commonly known as Bandikro or Bandit Town, located inside the Rapides Grah protected forest and destroyed by forest authorities in January 2020, in Soubre, Ivory Coast January 7, 2021. Picture taken January 7, 2021. REUTERS/Luc Gnago

DJIGBADJI, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - This cocoa-growing settlement was all but destroyed last year by Ivorian forest agents, leaving farmers to rake through their beans amid broken concrete and other remnants.

"They set the whole village on fire," said Alexis Kouassi Akpoue, describing the day in January 2020 when the agents raided the settlement in Rapides Grah, a protected forest, where he had illicitly planted cocoa with thousands of other farmers. "The next morning at 5 o'clock they sent in the bulldozers."