According to United Nations estimates, 50% of the projected increase in the world’s urban population will come from rural-to-urban migration so that by 2025 over 1.1 billion urban people in Less Developed Regions will be rural migrants (Guerny, 1995).
Clearly, the socio-economic and demographic ramifications of this massive rural exodus will have a marked impact not only on urban but also on rural areas alike.
Already, the economic effect of this negative phenomenon is being felt in the cocoa industry where according to the World Cocoa Foundation, the sustainability of the cocoa industry is being threatened by among others, the decline in farming by the able youth who rather are migrating to urban centers in pursuit of comfortable living.