" The Rubber Barons" 16 April 2025

From the air, the Liberian Agricultural Co. rubber plantation spreads like a green carpet over an area twice the size of Chicago. On the ground, more than 4,000 workers toil amid rows of trees, cutting bark, tapping in spigots and collecting the latex that drips into cups and will ultimately be turned into tires in Europe and the US. It’s grueling work, especially in West Africa’s heat and humidity, and it pays only $5.50 a day. That’s for those lucky enough to get a full-time job. Contract workers, many of them women, are paid even less. And they face repeated demands from supervisors for sex. [...]

Rebecca, who asked to be identified by a pseudonym to avoid retribution, says the requests for sex are incessant. Seven other women who worked at plantations in Liberia and Ghana owned by the same company, Luxembourg-based Socfin Group, told similar stories to Bloomberg News during visits in November. Most of them asked that their real names not be used. But eight more people — including a retired schoolteacher and community advocates — spoke on the record about hearing directly from women who said they were able to work only in exchange for sex.

Audits done for Socfin, some as recently as this year, have found credible evidence of sexual harassment, in some cases including rape, at six other company plantations in Sierra Leone and Cameroon. And that’s after more than a decade of efforts by activist groups to expose such practices and subsequent promises by Socfin to toughen sexual harassment policies. Allegations of sexual coercion aren’t the only issues hanging over the company. Lawsuits and complaints have accused Socfin of appropriating farmland, destroying villages, causing environmental damage and violating labor rights. At the Salala Rubber Corp. plantation in Liberia, which Socfin sold in August, cultivation was halted after workers set fire to two buildings and looted a warehouse during a strike earlier last year over squalid housing, onerous labor conditions and inadequate medical care.

Pressure from Nestlé and other customers prompted Socfin to take additional measures to fortify its sustainability policy. In 2016, it started working with the Earthworm Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit, to develop social responsibility guidelines. [...]

“There is a growing sense of urgency in our interactions with the company, and we feel they are taking these matters seriously,” says Jotica Sehgal, a spokesperson for Earthworm, which works with Nestlé, Colgate-Palmolive, Cargill and other multinational companies. Its audits of conditions at eight Socfin plantations, including three completed this year, determined that allegations of sexual abuse were “founded.” Socfin, which has not disputed Earthworm’s findings, says it has taken steps to address sexual harassment, including setting up gender committees and strengthening policies through a series of action plans. Ludovic Saint-Pol, a spokesperson for the company, said in an email that Socfin has “a deep-seated commitment and drive to uphold the highest sustainability standards.” That commitment, the spokesperson said, “may sometimes be misunderstood as ‘a sense of urgency,’ but it is simply our dedication to continuous improvement.” Socfin said it has obtained numerous environmental certifications “clearly demonstrating our investment in sustainability and quality.”