978-1-7281-3789-6/19/$31.00©2019 IEEE Assessment of Role of Innovative Technology through Blockchain Technology in Ghana’s Cocoa Beans Food Supply Chains. Salisu Musah 1* Management Information Systems Ankara Yılıdırım Beyazıt Universıty Ankara,Turkey mikeramzyus@gmail.com Tunç Durmuş Medeni 2 Management Information Systems Ankara Yılıdırım Beyazıt Universıty Ankara,Turkey tuncmedeni@gmail.com Demet Soylu 3 Management Information Systems Ankara Yılıdırım Beyazıt Universıty Ankara,Turkey bunchnoble@gmail.com Abstract— Innovative technology is known of its crucial role towards cocoa production. Just as other cash crops, cocoa also generates income as well as offers direct or indirect employment to majority of people. Ghana is the second leading producer of cocoa beans in the world and has been earmarked as 2019 world’s fastest growing economy by IMF in its World Economic Outlook. IMF predicts a growth rate of 8.8% for Ghana and 7.5% for Cote D’Ivoire as the second runner up. This research therefore assessed the role of innovative technology in cocoa beans food supply chain. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the contributions made by innovative technology through the application of blockchain technology towards effectiveness of cocoa bean food supply chain. The study also looked into how blockchain technology contributed in addressing common unethical issues in cocoa production. To achieve these objectives, a secondary source of data was analyzed and questionnaire was also administered to various cocoa farmers. Earlier findings from the literature review and other existing academic sources suggested that cocoa bean food supply chain is quite cumbersome and complex. However, it was found that, the application of blockchain technology has increased traceability and transparency in cocoa bean supply chains. The study also revealed that unethical activities in cocoa industry have decreased drastically. The contributions made by the study to the existing body of literature are twofold: (1) it made us understood how innovative technology through blockchain positively affects cocoa production; (2) it also showed how blockchain technology can be incorporated into cocoa bean food supply chains to enhance transparency, traceability and mitigate unethical activities in cocoa production. Keywords—blockchain technology, food supply chain, innovative technology, cocoa, transparency, traceability I. INTRODUCTION Innovative technology has in recent times been an integral part of solutions in every sector of economy. Complex tasks that were supposed to be executed with huge resources and man power are now easily done at relatively low costs in a shortest possible time. The agricultural sector of Ghana, the second largest leading producer of high quality cocoa, is not an exception. Due to awesome role played by agricultural technology, the sector is considered as one of the areas the revolution of innovative technology has improved. With the use of farm machinery, outputs of livestock, cash and food crops have drastically increased. It is assumed that since machine technology in the sector is doing very well, every food supply chain would possess one of the robust chains for its operations. Despite this, West African countries that are the leading producers of cocoa beans in the world are yet to have their supply chains in good shape. Among the issues facing cocoa production in Ghana are transparency and traceability, minimal attention to industrialization, lack of robust supply chain, lack of necessary skills in management and fragmented information sharing that culminates into inadequate supply chain visibility. In cocoa supply chain too, unethical issues such as child trafficking, child labor, deforestation, forced labor, has been cited as yet another challenge. Millions of children in both Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire are engaged in this practice. Sadly, regions in Ghana where cocoa farming is undergoing are faced with abject poverty. Farmers in the cocoa industry earn less than two United States Dollars per day. According to UN, earners in this category are considered below the poverty line. This makes sense as such families hardly afford three daily meals. Helpless parents are compelled to convince their kids into cocoa farming activities regardless of whether or not school is in session. Consequently, school drop outs increase in such areas where cocoa beans are produced. Issues such as transparency and traceability are among the major challenges facing cocoa beans food supply chains. It can be said that quality assurance requires complete traceability of the final product. In that case, it is required for exchange of quality information among all players to be able to fulfill the increasing demand of consumers regarding safety. So many food scandals in 1990s and 2000s (e.g. Bernard et al., 2002; Wales et al., 2006; Xiu & Klein, 2010) and unfortunate use of children and other unethical issues have been witnessed during cocoa beans supply chain processes. This consequently led to strict food safety and quality checks in national and international arena (Borrell Fontelles & Nicolai, 2004). Transparency with regards to the whole production is also a major concern and many consumers want to be sure products that eventually reach them for consumption are free from ethical issues. In 2019, World Economic Forum proposed twelve technology applications for emerging opportunities in food systems. Among them is the blockchain technology that is gradually gaining popularity in Ghana. It is a technology that has recently been introduced to enhance product data traceability [35]. Quite a number of farmers and processors