Brexit allows us to make West Africa richer

So here's a little proposal. Brexit means that we will be free of the European Union's insistence upon imposing tariffs on products from outside the bloc. This makes us richer of course, we get access to more cheap imports.

And as Madsen continually insists, we can make poorer people richer by buying things made by poor people in poor countries. So, why don't we decide to have zero import duties on things made by those poor people?

Ivory Coast and Ghana will work together to improve the organisation and sale of their cocoa, Presidents Alassane Ouattara and Nana Akufo-Addo said on Friday at the end of a summit.

The West African neighbours, the world's two biggest cocoa producers, will also improve coordination between their cocoa sector regulators, the presidents said in a statement after meeting in Ivory Coast's economic capital Abidjan.

Cocoa is vital to the economies of both countries and Ivory Coast has already slashed its 2017 budget due to plummeting global cocoa prices.

The two countries are also seeking African Development Bank funding to develop industries to add value to their cocoa with products such as cocoa paste and cocoa butter, which can be made into chocolate.

The major reason those countries have never developed a processing industry, are still stuck exporting only the raw beans, is the differential tariff structure:

Cocoa producing countries limit themselves to mainly exporting beans -rather than manufactured cocoa, or chocolate products- mostly because of tariff escalation. The EU has a bound rate of 0 percent for cocoa beans, but a 7.7 percent, and 15 percent ad valorem duty on cocoa powder and chocolate crumb containing cocoa butter respectively;

Similarly, Japan applies a bound rate of 0 percent for un-processed cocoa beans, but charges a 10 percent tax for cocoa paste wholly or partly defatted, and a 29.8 percent duty on cocoa powder containing added sugar;

The US has no ad valorem on cocoa beans, but imposes a duty of 0.52 cents/Kg for cocoa powder -with no added sugar- and tariffs could go up to 52.8 cents/Kg for imported chocolate products containing cocoa butter.

We can't tell everyone else what to do of course but why don't we make both ourselves and West Africa better off by abolishing these duties so that they can move up the processing chain?