Obed Owusu-Addai

Obed Owusu-Addai is the co-founder and managing campaigner at EcoCare Ghana - a rights-based policy advocacy organization. He is also a cocoa farmer and the co-convener for the Ghana Civil-society Cocoa Platform (GCCP). Obed is a forester by training with long work experience in Ghana’s Forestry sector – having work with Ghana Forestry Commission as a forest ranger in his early years. He has been hugely involved in EU policy programmes such as the EUTR, FLEGT-VPA and most recently the EUDR and HRDD. He works with several local cocoa cooperatives in Ghana and represent CSOs on numerous committees and structures such as the CFI traceability and mapping task force, the CSO-COCOBOD team on CMS, the ARS1000 mirror committee among others. But most importantly, Obed represent the interest of local communities and smallholder farmers and believes living income for smallholder farmers is a right not a privilege.