In Africa, phytoplasmas are associated with coconut diseases know as Cape St. Paul Wilt (CSPW) in Ghana, Kaincopé disease in Togo, Kribi disease in Cameroon, Lethal Disease (LD) in Tanzania, and Lethal Yellowing in Mozambique (LYM). Our main concern was the possible variability of phytoplasmas in Ghana and Mozambique, in order to design the most efficient diagnosis tools. As usual with phytoplasma diseases, we used so-called "phytoplasma universal primers" such as P1/P7 or "specific primers" such as G813/AKSR claimed to be specific to CSPW (Tymon et al., 1998). The data obtained showed that using those primers could lead to erroneous results and that "CSPW primers" did not diagnose all cases.