This article focuses on young coffee and cocoa farmers in the village of Zopaguhé, in western Côte d’Ivoire. Youth in the area are examined as a weak link but also as an innovative component in the overall farm system which, although it provided increased wealth and social mobility to previous generations, is no longer a means to self-sufficiency and emancipation. The research shows how educated youth who are open to the world use their agricultural savings to become “individual entrepreneurs” outside the village, whilst also forging new types of solidarity that transcend former divides. The study underscores the complexification of rural society and the risk of new divides in the context of exacerbated open-market competition.