Ghana and the Ivory Coast contribute a big chunk of the world’s chocolate. Yet, farmers here only earn around $1 a day. We profile entrepreneurs and chocolatiers determined to make sure the practice of cultivating cocoa prevails and it’s a sweet deal for the producers too.



British author Roald Dahl tapped into every chocoholic’s imagination when creating Willy Wonka’s bizarre chocolate factory in his 1964 children’s novel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Although the signature chocolate river may have been pure fantasy, Africa’s cocoa industry is being molded by real-life chocolate-makers who are making it their mission to demonstrate why the continent deserves a golden ticket.



“I’ve never seen anyone miserable while tasting chocolate. Even if you are miserable, you take a bite of chocolate and it boosts your mood. It makes people joyful. That’s part of its mystery and beauty,” believes Kimberly Addison, who, along with her sister Priscilla, started Ghana’s ’57 Chocolate in 2016. 



The name of the Accra-based bean-to-bar company is inspired by the year in which the country gained independence and the spirit of developing a nation by manufacturing high-quality products.



Having spent her formative years in Switzerland’s second-most populous city, Geneva, Addison was accustomed to giving Swiss chocolate as gifts when visiting friends and family in the United States (U.S.), Senegal, and Ghana.



“I was living in the chocolate nation of the world — or so I thought.”



Fulfilling her life-long dream of moving back to Ghana prompted her friends to take her on a farewell outing to a chocolate factory two weeks before her departure. It was during that tour that the seed of Addison’s life’s purpose began to cultivate.



“They had a display of where they sourced their cocoa beans from, and lo and behold, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana were the two largest displays. I asked myself, ‘why on earth have I been taking Swiss chocolate everywhere I travel when the main ingredient comes from the continent of Africa? I should be bringing Ghanaian chocolate to Switzerland’.”



The only problem – Ghanaian chocolate didn’t really exist.



Although Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are responsible for growing around 70% of the world’s cocoa beans, the raw material is most often exported to chocolate-producing countries in Europe and the U.S.



The lack of a locally-produced chocolate bar on the supermarket shelves of Côte d’Ivoire is what influenced Axel Emmanuel Gbaou to create his own. Not exactly the typical path for a banker with a master’s degree in taxation.



“There was no chocolate-maker in my country, even though we produce more than 2 million [metric] tonnes of cocoa per year. So, I decided to leave my job at the bank and rise to the challenge.”



Sourcing beans from Côte d’Ivoire’s seven cocoa farming regions, Gbaou has created mineral-rich, earthy blends that have won international awards, dispelling the myth that African-produced chocolate is not as good as that from global corporations like Nestlé and Mars.



“If you get good quality raw materials, half your job is already done,” says Kyle Hickman, head chocolatier at AFRIKOA in Cape Town, South Africa. The hand-crafted brand uses heirloom beans from Tanzania that are purchased from farmers through direct trade.



“Chocolate has to be refined to a point that it’s really smooth, down to 20 microns or less, so that our tongue cannot pick up any texture. It then goes through a process called conching where we get rid of a lot of the volatile notes, because chocolate can be very acidic if it’s not processed properly.”



The chocolate is then tempered to allow the fat crystals to set, and other elements like cocoa butter; sugar; milk powder; and flavorings are added in. South African rooibos tea and Rwandan coffee can be found amidst AFRIKOA’s wares, while ’57’s collection features flavors like hibiscus and moringa.



“It’s so easy to just break a bar, pop a piece in your mouth and enjoy it because chocolate is a food that brings people together and makes you smile, but I never in a thousand years knew how hard it is to make,” admits Addison who learned the process by spending a month with a chocolate-making couple in England before returning to Accra to teach others.



“Isn’t it ironic that I had to go outside of the continent to get training in chocolate-making, only to bring it back? Ghana is the second-largest producer of cocoa, yet we don’t really have any formal schools or technical training centers on how to work with this major resource of ours.&#8221;



A third of the globe’s cocoa farmers reside in parts of West Africa, though cocoa is not something that ever found a place in the local diet. The majority of cocoa growers have never even seen a piece of chocolate, let alone taken a bite.



“Cocoa was introduced during the colonial period and was cultivated from the beginning to be exported,” explains Michael E. Odijie, a research associate at University College London. “It was not introduced as a food crop that later became a cash crop; it was introduced as a cash crop right away. People cultivating cocoa in the late 19th century had no idea what the use for this crop was, but they understood that after harvest, there was always somebody willing to buy it.”



Despite being integral to the chocolate production process, farmers rarely receive their due. A shortfall in the most recent harvest, thanks to various factors such as climate change, diseased trees, and lack of investment, have resulted in cocoa prices soaring from $2.60 per kilogram at the beginning of 2023 to around $9.80 in July 2024. Yet, farmers are still only earning around $1 a day.



“There is a power imbalance between cocoa farmers at one end of the value chain and multinationals at the other end,” Odijie notes. “Farmers don’t have control over price which is basically set by demand and supply. A cocoa farmer in a village in Ghana does not have the capital, the information, the research to properly negotiate with the other end of the value chain.”


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The lack of feasible income, in some cases, results in an inability to pay workers, thus leading farmers to resort to child labor.



“Child labor is defined by the International Labour Organization as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to their physical and mental development. This can include carrying heavy loads, using sharp tools like machetes to harvest the cocoa, or when the work interferes with the child’s schooling,” explains the Communications Director of the International Cocoa Initiative, Katie Bird.



The role of the NPO is to work with farmers, civil society organizations, and policymakers to tackle the issue of child labor and trafficking in West Africa where around 1.5 million children are reportedly affected. Raising awareness, improving access to quality education, building classrooms, providing books and uniforms, cash injections, and focusing on gender equality are some of the means the initiative has employed to combat the issue.



Bird notes: “Advancing women’s economic empowerment, helping them to participate in household decision-making can be very useful. There is usually more investment into the children’s schooling when the women have more of a say in the household decision-making.”



While the men work the field, Gbaou has taken it upon himself to share skills with the wives, mothers, and daughters of the communities, so they, too, may have a hand in shaping their future. “I have trained more than 2,000 women throughout Africa,” he reveals. “In the past, they did not know what to do with the beans, but now some make chocolate spread that they can sell to the children in the village. I train them how to make things with cocoa butter like soap and lipstick. It brings them some economic freedom.”



Addison agrees: “We’ve learned that the best investment one can make is in another human being, so our goal is that whoever comes through our door at ’57 must leave here better than they came.”



It is also about ensuring that the practice of cultivating cocoa prevails.



“They often say that the next generation of cocoa farmers don’t exist. And honestly, sometimes I even want to say that the next generation of farmers in general don’t exist. So now the challenge is how do we make farming interesting for young people?”



Much like its cocoa beans, the Ghanaian chocolatier hopes that Africans will remain on the continent.



“Africa shouldn’t be a place that we leave; it should be a place where people want to come to. Yes, it has its issues, its challenges, but where there are problems there are opportunities to begin to make changes. There’s no need to seek greener pastures elsewhere, we can create our own here.”



Choc-ful of potential, Africa is no longer simply clocking in to the chocolate factory — it’s building its own and inviting the world inside for a taste.

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Africa’s Chocolate Industry: Bean There Done That?

The unpalatable truth is an unfair distribution of profits in the global cocoa trade, of which West Africa has substantive market share. Thankfully, entrepreneurial disruptors and a new initiative in Ghana seek a sweeter ending for farmers.



BEFORE IT REACHED THE fashionable parlors of early modern Europe, where it was imbibed as an expensive accessory to gossip and gambling, chocolate had already enjoyed a long, intoxicating life. The aphrodisiac beverage cacahuatl, favored by ancient South American cultures such as the Mayans and the Aztecs, was brewed, with chillies, from the cacao bean, a local currency so valuable it quickly caught the avaricious attention of the Spanish Conquistadors. The rest is history – and a narrative tainted with the bitterness of greed and exploitation. But there are signs at last that this story may be headed to a sweeter ending.



The World Cocoa Foundation has calculated that 4.5 million tons of cocoa beans are now consumed annually: as cocoa butter, widely used in cosmetics as well as chocolate products; cocoa powder, a staple in chocolate flavorings; and cocoa liquor, a paste of cocoa butter and solids essential in the production of solid chocolate. The juice of the bean (sweatings) can also be found in soft drinks and alcoholic beverages such as brandy, with the bean husk burned into potash for soaps and fertilizers.



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_06-1024x683.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-48195" width="444" height="295" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_06-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_06-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_06-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_06-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_06-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_06-600x400.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 444px) 100vw, 444px" /><figcaption>Photo Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



The humble cocoa bean is thus a versatile, repeatedly monetizable commodity: in a 2019 Allied Market Research report, the global cocoa products market was valued at $24.5 billion, and is expected to garner $30.2 billion by 2026. But like many of the planet’s most coveted exports, such as tea and iron ore, the crop’s rich dividends are often not trickling down to the mouths that need them most.



The International Cocoa Organization reports that 60% of the world’s cocoa is produced by 2.5 million farming families in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire (the populations of the two countries are 29 million and 25 million respectively). But according to the Walk Free Foundation’s 2018 Global Slavery Index, this figure includes an estimated 2.1 million children working under illegal conditions, and at least 30,000 people entrapped in modern slavery. The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines child labor as “mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children, and [that which] interferes with their schooling”, and modern slavery as “exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power”. The unpalatable truth is that most of the chocolate that reaches our shelves handsomely rewards a giant multinational handful of liquid chocolate manufacturers and cocoa traders, but pays cocoa farmers in West Africa an average of less than $1 a day (Fairtrade Foundation report, 2019).



Professor Genevieve LeBaron, Director of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), and author of the Global Business of Forced Labour report of 2018, has identified “widespread labor exploitation” within the global cocoa supply chain. “This is rooted in the industry’s business model and supply chain dynamics, which concentrate profits and value at the top of the chain and involves incredibly thin margins and low income for actors at the bottom,” she says. “I also found that ethical certification schemes covering the cocoa industry are failing to create worksites that are free from exploitation.”



LeBaron warns that stickers and symbols on cocoa products glibly advertising guarantees of ‘fair’ conditions for their producers are not what they purport to be. “Consumers need to be sceptical of ‘ethical’ and ‘fair trade’ marketing,” she says. “Labor exploitation takes place even in ethically certified supply chains. There is a need for much stronger accountability over ethical and fair trade certification and auditing. A major overhaul of these programs is needed, especially in terms of how they create and distribute value and are ‘enforced’ – both of which are highly flawed and lacking.”



Until recently, the status quo in the market had remained undisrupted, favoring the industry superpowers who could source cheaply from multiple suppliers and buy in large amounts. “Cocoa is unique in that West Africa contributes such a substantive proportion of market share,” she says. “And the confectionary industry is heavily reliant on sourcing from the region to secure supply and maintain profits.”



New investment in the West African cocoa industry may go some way to improving conditions on the ground. In November 2019, Ghana’s cocoa regulator, COCOBOD, finalized a $600 million loan at the Africa Investment Forum “to finance new warehouses, rehabilitate plantations and support the processing sector”, including $250 million from development finance institutions led by the African Development Bank (AfDB). “Proceeds of the facility will be used to finance key components of COCOBOD’s productivity enhancement programs – a set of interventions aimed at improving Ghana’s cocoa productivity per hectare and increasing overall cocoa production levels,” says Dr Jennifer Blanke, the AfDB’s Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development. “The financing of new warehouses will provide more opportunity to store beans longer and create buffer stocks. This will also allow COCOBOD to have more influence on the volume of beans on the market, as well as the associated price.” She maintains there is a framework already in place for safeguarding farmers against exploitation. “The bank applies integrated environmental and social safeguard systems into business practices with all clients with whom we work, including COCOBOD.” Blanke believes these investments in the cocoa production infrastructure will in turn have a positive effect on the lives of the industry’s vulnerable farming communities. “The idea is that the bank-funded productivity enhancement programs will increase farmer incomes, as well as modernize farming methods,” she says. “This combination should serve as a disincentive to participating in the cocoa trade under illegal or unethical conditions.”



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_03-copy-1024x703.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-48197" width="555" height="381" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_03-copy-1024x703.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_03-copy-300x206.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_03-copy-768x527.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_03-copy-1536x1054.jpg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_03-copy-2048x1406.jpg 2048w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Tonys_Chocolonely_Ghana_cocoa_drying_03-copy-600x412.jpg 600w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 555px) 100vw, 555px" /><figcaption>Photo Supplied</figcaption></figure></div>



With a mission to make chocolate “100% slave free”, the entrepreneurial disruptor at the sharp end of the industry is Dutch chocolate company Tony’s Chocolonely. The brand was founded in 2005 by investigative journalist Teun (Tony) van de Keuken, who set out on a (lonely) quest to create a chocolate bar from cocoa beans produced in West Africa by fairly-compensated farmers instead of slave labor. Tony’s Chocolonely advocates five game-changing ‘sourcing principles’: traceable beans, a higher premium paid to farmers, investment in cooperatives and farmer training, a minimum five-year business relationship, and improved productivity (from 300kg to 800kg per hectare). Paul Schoenmakers, the company’s Head of Impact, says that efforts to completely eradicate slavery from its supply chain are vigilant and ongoing. “In the past year, 6,624 cocoa partners supplied to us,” he says. “We found 259 new cases of illegal child labor, which we are working to remediate. More than 25,000 people participated in our awareness-raising sessions. For the second year in a row, 100% of the 5,465 metric tons of cocoa beans Tony’s purchased through its partners were traceable. Seventy one percent of people who buy chocolate in the Netherlands (where the brand is the market leader) now know about the issues. That’s important for us, because our roadmap starts with trading awareness.” The company has pushed hard for two years for the Dutch parliament to enact legislation similar to the UK’s 2015 Modern Slavery Act, and a bill has now passed which will require companies legally domiciled in the Netherlands to “conduct investigative research to determine whether child labor is occurring in their supply chains and establish a concrete course of action for rectifying it”.



Schoenmakers believes that any company, big or small, can and should apply the same due diligence. “The framework of our five sourcing principles fits very well to other commodity sectors too,” he says. “Especially coffee and tea, but also cotton. What we are currently working on is making the framework easier for other companies to implement, and we are actively helping them to use that model.”



He says the company’s aim is for all its suppliers to become independent – even from Tony’s. “We used to be the only buyer from a particular cooperative in Ghana. But two years ago, we helped them successfully represent themselves in the international market, and they got access to seven other premium customers. We’re a well-paying customer, so cooperatives like to work with us, but we want them to find other customers too. That also helps us grow.”



A fair premium for cocoa beans – last year, Tony’s paid a 20% premium on the farm gate price – can have a radical and long-lasting impact on the lives of local farmers. “One of the most positive concrete changes is simply paying more money to the farmer. Fighting poverty is a very complicated thing to do, but if you don’t pay more for cocoa, all the other efforts will fail.”



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Within a complex chain from producer to consumer that reaches far across the globe from the bean’s origin, are there ever opportunities for the farmers to try the final product (a chunky chocolate bar quirkily divided into unequal pieces, a metaphor for the unfair distribution of profits in the cocoa trade)?



“We take two cases full of chocolate every time we go there,” Schoenmakers says. “It’s ridiculous so many cocoa farmers have never tasted chocolate in their lives. It’s a luxury they will normally never taste. More than four and a half billion dollars get sucked up by the big chocolate companies every year. Chocolate is a treat, a gift. It’s absolute madness that for a gift that no one really needs, so many people suffer.



-By Alastair Hagger

Reis Ghana, van 23 tot 27 januari 2017

‘Cocoa Farmers Who Have Never Tasted Chocolate In Their Lives’

Tim McCollum and the rest of the staff at Madécasse have an unusual way of measuring the success of their company.
“People who work with us in Madagascar weigh more than when we first started. Every time we go back, we notice that they have put on weight.”
In Madagascar, where 90% of the population live on less than $2 a day, only those with a decent income are able to afford to eat properly. The roughly 100 farmers who supply Madécasse with cocoa beans all have a stable contract and the security of knowing what they will earn each month, and so can feed themselves fairly well.
Their raw product is used to make chocolate that Wine Spectator called very high quality, and left the New York Times awestruck. The bars are different to any others not just because of their flavor and quality but because Madécasse oversees the process from start to finish. They are one of the only companies in Africa—where 70% of the world’s cocoa comes from but only 1% of chocolate is made—to do that.
Africa is the place where resources are often obtained but the continent seldom benefits from the finished product. McCollum and Brent Beach wanted to change that because they genuinely cared about Madagascar, having spent 10 years there as Peace Corps volunteers. They also knew that they could create something that would become a market leader.
“It’s really hard not to make good chocolate when you have the best source. The source is the cocoa beans and 80% of the flavor of the chocolate is in the cocoa beans,” says McCollum.
Madagascan cocoa is widely accepted as being a class above the rest simply because of its genetic variety. That fact was the start, realizing Madagascar’s potential was the next step.
Few people really know about Madagascar and McCollum and Beach were no different. When they were assigned there in 1998, they only had an inkling about where it was.
“It was before the internet and when I was told that was where I was being posted I wondered if it was the big island off the coast of Africa but I wasn’t sure,” says McCollum.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-31343 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/18-3farmers_gathering-300x201.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="201" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/18-3farmers_gathering-300x201.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/18-3farmers_gathering-600x403.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/18-3farmers_gathering-768x516.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/18-3farmers_gathering.jpg 1024w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Minimal information meant that they went to Madagascar without expectation and so, allowed themselves to become absorbed in the experience.
“It was not like we were businessmen or diplomats; we were living in remote villages. People wondered, ‘Who is this white guy? Why doesn’t he wear sunglasses? Why is he buying tomatoes in the market?’ Slowly, we learned the local dialect and we gained acceptance and it was not long before they were calling us their children.”
It was there that the idea to start a complete chocolate making company was born, even though it seemed improbable.
“The beauty of innovation is that there is very fine line between what separates a good idea from an insane one. If we had looked at it on paper, we wouldn’t have done it. We knew it had never been done before and we knew it could be done,” says McCollum.
The actual chocolate making process was something they had to do a fair amount of Google searches on, but the mechanics of the job are not all that complicated. In fact, it is something a lot of us would like to do.
“It’s about developing a good palette. We had a lot of well-wishers and assistance, like the head of research and development of Mars. People who knew a lot more about chocolate than we did lined up behind us. They received our sample batches and gave us a lot of constructive feedback,” says Beach.
The team faced two major challenges in their endeavour, which sometimes continue to test them.
“Infrastructure is a major problem. The roads are bad and there is limited internet and phone access. And then there is a knowledge gap between what the American consumer wants and what the farmers produce. We are getting them to see the importance of consistency and protocol. The quality is there but it’s important to be consistent because that creates that nuanced flavor and that someone 8,000 miles away will pick up,” says Beach.
Education is an important part of the process. Each time McCollum and Beach go back to Madagascar they take an assortment of chocolate with them and have a tasting session with the chocolate makers on site.
“Everyone can taste the difference in our product,” says Beach.
To have such belief in the product signals a marked difference in attitude from when they first addressed a semi-circle of eight to 10 employees with their idea. They all took half a step backwards, presumably in disbelief at what they were being told.
Now, even things which were never done previously have been achieved with success. Making the actual chocolate and the packaging are two such activities.
“We taught villagers how to make chocolate. We also had to look at printing for the Western world because what the local printing press could do was of varying quality,” says McCollum.
Sometimes the uniformity dips but Madécasse has established itself as a company that can deliver an excellent product, all of the time. By doing that, they won over American consumers and credit them with driving their success. They also sell in over 2,000 stores across Europe and the United States and their chocolate is available throughout South Africa and Kenya.
While the product is spreading, the company does not have a big marketing budget and has no advertising at all. Instead, they rely on word of mouth, the quality of their product and the story behind it and through that they have become a known brand.
“People are interested in buying fairtrade products and ours is four times as good because the entire process happens in Madagascar,” McCollum says.
As a result Madécasse’s sales have doubled every year since they have started and the benefit is visible in the place they most wanted it to be.
“There is a noticeable change in the way the people we work with live. There are very few places for people to work in a formal sector in Madagascar and these people have that. They have security.”
They also have healthier bodies, ironically from being involved with chocolate.   FL

Sea-Salt-Nibs

The Sweet life On An African Island

Gluttony and chocolate drive birthday parties, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas and Halloween.
“All of our great celebrations of life are associated with chocolate,” says Carol Off, author of Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet.
Even three million tons of chocolate a year is not enough to satisfy the world’s voracious appetite. More than two thirds of it comes from Africa.
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The chocolate craze began with the harvesting of cocoa by 16th-century Spanish settlers in Central America, where it was discovered. Five hundred years later, West Africa grows 70% of the world’s cocoa. The industry is valued at $105 billion. The Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria are the world’s three largest producers. The Ivory Coast produces 41% of the world’s cocoa. It grows around $1 billion worth annually.
For more than two million small-holder African cocoa farmers—90% of which are family-owned farms no bigger than 5 hectares—cocoa is life. Aside from this, the chocolate industry is fragile. Small farms often struggle against bad weather conditions, pests and disease, which can cut yields by 40% annually, according to the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO). Ecobank predicts that this year’s delayed, but good, rains in the Ivory Coast will boost mid-crop yield to 350,000 tons: a 10% increase compared to the last 10 years. Despite this good fortune, the people who grow the cocoa complain they are being squeezed.
“Cocoa farmers in West Africa receive between 3.5% and 6.4% of the final value of a chocolate bar (depending on the percentage cocoa content), whereas the manufacturer’s share has increased from 56% to 70% and the retailer’s share from 12% to 17%,” according to the Fairtrade Foundation. It campaigns for a bigger share for the growers.
The World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) launched the African Cocoa Initiative (ACI) in mid-March. It encourages profitable sustainability by equipping 100,000 cocoa famers, over five years, with farming and management skills. The ACI increases farmers’ revenues and helps to raise low yields. The foundation’s member companies—Barry Callebaut, Ferrero, Kraft Foods, Lindt &amp; Sprüngli, Mars and Nestlé—pay for it.
While the cocoa industry is lucrative, farmers in the Ivory Coast are being wooed by rubber. Cocoa farmers are replacing ageing plantations with rubber seedlings. Rubber—after around seven years—produces a monthly income, whereas the average cocoa tree bears 30 pods over two annual crops.  This is nearly enough to produce 1kg of dark chocolate, according to the Hershey Company.
Ghana, which meets 18% of the global demand, is the second-biggest supplier of cocoa. Author Carol Off traveled to Ghana to investigate the cocoa industry. She wrote of falling abusive labor practices and better healthcare. On the other side of the coin, cocoa farmers are also accused of reporting lower yields and hiding beans to raise the market price. Illegal smuggling between cocoa producing countries is also rumored.
The Ghanaian cocoa industry is regulated by Cocobod, which ensures a fixed price at the beginning of each season. If prices fluctuate during the season, farmers are paid the difference. Farmers sell their cocoa beans to licensed buying companies. This regulation ensures that high-quality Ghanaian cocoa beans are highly sought after.
There’s an apparent paradox: Africa is the world’s leading cocoa supplier, yet the top 10 confectionary companies are outside Africa; most are based in Europe and the United States. While the challenges of producing in Africa are plenty, so are the opportunities.
Afrotropic Cocoa Processing, a Ghanaian manufacturing company, grinds over 6,000 metric tons of local cocoa beans annually. It sells its products—cocoa liquor, cocoa butter and cocoa powder—to international food manufacturers. A large percentage of European chocolate is made from Ghanaian cocoa. Switzerland eats the most chocolate. World-famous companies like Cailler-Néstle, Toblerone, Lindt, Teuscher and Sprüngli call it home.
Kraft Foods is the world’s largest chocolate manufacturer, and has manufacturing plants in South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana, Kenya and Namibia. It is leading by example with commitments of $150 million towards investment in manufacturing facilities in the Southern Africa region over the next three years. Cadbury, owned by Kraft Foods, buys its cocoa beans from Ghana and Nigeria and manufactures in South Africa and Namibia. By 2015, Nestlé, the third largest manufacturer, will add five African factories to its already existing 28. A two-fold increase in its products, in the last few years, has made it more competitive.
These companies understand that this investment is a stepping-stone into African markets. What if chocolate brands like CÔte d’Or and Toblerone, both owned by Kraft Foods, were being made in Africa? This development of skilled jobs would help to alleviate poverty and possibly decrease the cost of production.
During the last decade, Africa has boasted a 5% annual growth. While the continent is open to industrial growth, it only accounts for 1% of global manufacturing. Africa is a fertile terrain for private-sector investments in industry and manufacturing, with small manufacturers going where multinationals fear to tread. Africa has the capacity to become a manufacturing powerhouse.
Madécasse chocolate is the proof. It has created jobs by producing chocolate in Madagascar. While problems with electricity and water persist, the company is training up a skilled workforce. Maybe investing in chocolate is as simple as spotting the obvious that everyone else misses.

Tag: Chocolate

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