When a major drought hit the South-West of Côte d’Ivoire in 2015, much of the expected harvest of the country’s main commodity — cocoa — was lost and the livelihoods of thousands of smallholder farmers were jeopardised. “I nearly lost my entire cocoa plantation, except for in the areas where I had large trees,” says Kouassi Akoura Apolinaire Yao, a young farmer who manages a two-hectare plantation near Méagui, 400 km west of the capital Abidjan. “It was these trees’ shade that saved the cocoa plants.”