In recent years, research has emphasized the benefits of agroforestry in enhancing positive externalities and environmental services of biodiversity in cocoa cultivation. However, in practice, in the two major producing countries, complex agroforestry cocoa production systems are shrinking both in terms of surface area and number of species. The timber legislation in Africa and what farmers perceive of this legislation, having been excluded from the legal timber market for decades, is one of the main factors behind this trend. One of the reasons farmers cut or burn their trees is to avoid disturbance by logging companies that come to extract trees from their cocoa farms, without any reasonable compensation. The main objective of this paper is to show that this trend will not be reversed by legislation change coming from the top, with the hope that fewer trees will be spoiled, but rather by a move from below, from farmers themselves. The question is now less one of preserving existing or surviving 'chocolate agroforests', but rather one of having smallholders favouring tree regeneration from the stumps and planting trees, mostly indigenous trees, and organising themselves for that purpose. The only method is to review a few initiatives taken by a few institutions and by farmers themselves with the aim of re-inserting timber trees in their faming systems, mostly by planting. Among these initiatives, one undertaken in Ghana in the early 2000s by an Italian NGO seems to have been successful since some farmers continued to maintain their trees and even kept planting after the project closed. Some farmers also started to informally organize themselves to get coverage in papers in the capital of the country and defend their property rights. The paper evaluates the main factors and lessons that can be drawn from of this experience. (Texte intégral)