Your Ghana, My Ghana: When will Ghana be known for its chocolatiers?

The second of this two-part series focuses on what it will take for Ghana, famed for the best cocoa beans on earth, to make its name among the big chocolate makers of the world.

Economic historians call them ‘linkages’. They are the forward and backward links between agriculture and other sectors of the economy that enable an underdeveloped economy to leap into the future.

Ghana’s cocoa beans get a premium price on world markets because its geographic location and climate favour cocoa production and because the natural method of fermenting cocoa beans developed by cocoa farmers at the start of the cocoa revolution in the 1890s gives Ghana’s cocoa its distinct quality and flavour.

But when it comes to the branding of chocolate and other cocoa by-products, Ghana is still far from gaining world renown. This deprives the economy of the kind of linkages that could deepen the sophistication of its manufacturing industry.

Linkages

The concept of ‘linkages’ was developed by a German economic historian called Albert Otto Hirschman in the 1950s. Hirschman’s strategy for achieving economic development in poor developing economies was to target key industries with strong ‘linkages’ to other parts of the economy.

As it happens, Hirschman was one of the world-renowned economists that Nkrumah brought to Ghana during the late 1950s and early 1960s to advise him ahead of the writing of his Seven-Year Development Plan.

A year before his overthrow in 1966, Nkrumah set up the Cocoa Processing Company (CPC) to create these types of linkages between Ghana’s star performer, cocoa, and its fledgeling manufacturing industry.

Today, CPC has installed capacity to process 64,500 metric tons of raw beans a year, but is only hitting 25,000 metric tons currently. Similarly, despite an annual budget to produce 3,000 metric tons of chocolates of all varieties, the company is barely managing 2,000 metric tons currently due to constraints with old machinery breaking down, according to CPC Head of Corporate Communications, James Ekow Rhule.

But though CPC has some way to go to extract itself from a crisis that saw its share price plummet to GH¢1 some years ago, there are some areas of promise for Ghana’s chocolate-making ambitions.

Promise

After the late New Patriotic Party stalwart, Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, took the bold step to rename Valentine’s Day ‘Chocolate Day’ in Ghana, consumption of chocolate began to rise markedly.

CPC was the only Ghanaian chocolate producer from 1965 until 2016, when private individuals producing artisanal chocolates emerged. In recent years, the rise of deliciously high-quality, local artisanal brands such as Niche, Bioko, Mansa Gold, Midunu and Fairafric have challenged the dominance of Ghana’s CPC’s as the sole player in the local chocolate and confectionery manufacturing industry with its Golden Tree varieties.

When it comes to cocoa production, small really is beautiful. The indigenous farming practices developed by Ghana’s small-scale farmers, including the earth-friendly method of fermenting cocoa beans, is what has made Ghana’s cocoa beans the most prized in the world, attracting a premium price.

This gives chocolatiers an advantage, in that their raw material is already branded and has a distinct taste unlike any other. In addition, whereas all other chocolate manufacturers use a blend of cocoa beans from all over the world, with Ghana’s distinct flavour making up perhaps 10 per cent of the mix, Ghana is the only country in the world that does not blend its cocoa beans with those from any other country.

For that reason, Ghana’s cocoa has a very distinct flavour. As Ghana Cocoa Board Chief Executive, Joseph Boahen Aidoo puts it, “you can smell Ghana’s cocoa from 2 kilometres away.”

Challenges and constraints

But for small artisanal brands, such as Bioko and Mansa Gold, the challenges are mainly about the high cost of doing business in Ghana. Both companies produce handcrafted (or ‘artisanal’) chocolates.

This means that the cocoa beans are sorted by hand and roasted in small batches. The cost of production is therefore higher than for a large manufacturer benefiting from economies of scale.

Artisanal chocolate is ‘bean to bar’ chocolate and uses the whole cocoa bean. Small artisanal chocolatiers do not generally have the means to become licensed buyers and must purchase their beans from COCOBOD rather than directly from the cocoa farmers. But Bioko gets some of its beans from a small family farm in Asante.

Bioko was started by retired lawyer, Jane Donkor, in December 2016 as Treats Confection. In 2017, in a deliberate move to rebrand, it changed its name to Bioko, the new name for Fernando Po, where Tetteh Quarshie acquired the cocoa beans that started Ghana’s cocoa revolution.

Bioko produces 3 metric tons of chocolate a year, including 17 flavours of pralines and bonbon and 10 flavours of chocolate bars. These include exotic Ghanaian flavours such as gari, zowe, prekese, Volta Region coffee, Ada salt and bissap.

But little of it is currently exported due to the high cost of transportation, the cost of importing machines, the high cost of dairy and sugar ingredients, which are not produced in Ghana, and the high cost of electricity to run air conditioners to keep the machines cool and the final product from melting.

Donkor describes the challenges facing Ghana’s chocolatiers as “old trees and the problem of galamsey. “To say our rivers have 40 years left is generous,” Donkor told “Your Ghana, My Ghana”.

She also describes as a “serious problem” the new European Union tariff on imports, stipulating that all ingredients should come from Europe. “When cocoa becomes part of a tariff system, it means they don’t want the finished product in Europe, just the beans.”

A newer entrant, Mansa Gold, was started in 2020 by Preba Arkaah, also a former corporate lawyer. In just four years, Arkaah has created a niche with several flavours of confectionery and chocolate bars, each beautifully packaged and conceptualised with a small write-up evoking birdlife, nature, history and culture.

But Arkaah is emphatic that the current regulation of the cocoa industry does not take into account the needs and characteristics of artisanal chocolatiers. “I need to be able to take from the different farms and regions, to add to the unique flavour of each. If I have to buy a blend from COCOBOD, how will it be different from any other chocolate?

How do I create something special that the international market will be interested in?”, Arkaah asked.

“They will say they’re trying to regulate local production. We don’t need regulation. I’m not saying they shouldn’t certify local production. But it has to be halfway between Unilever and small-scale production,” Arkaah said.

When it comes to regional opportunities opened up in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Arkaah says she would like to export to the West coast of Africa. “I tried to export through AfCFTA. I laughed. They’re paper pushers.

You don’t have a paper pusher to do a practical piece of work. Some in the Secretariat have never tried to export and they don’t know the practicalities,” Arkaah told “Your Ghana, My Ghana”.

Arkaah is equally disparaging about the government’s efforts to support the country’s chocolatiers. “There are no specific government initiatives. If anything, governments make it difficult to operate,” Arkaah claimed.

“We used to be able to import machinery free of duty. We now have 5 per cent import duty on chocolate machinery. They don’t even recognise what is chocolate machinery; for example, we have to pay the same duties as on fridges for our holding cabinets, or we get caught up in red tape.

There are something like 20 taxes and levies,” she said. Arkaah says she pays an effective 30 per cent in duties on everything she imports, in addition to shipping and insurance. In addition, VAT and levies, including Covid and national health insurance amount to 22.5 per cent.

“Tax is a real issue. All the money I make is ploughed back into machinery. And who can afford a bank loan?”, Arkaah retorted. Chocolate manufacturing is clearly a highly lucrative, multi-billion dollar business.

While European markets are probably not going to magically open up to Ghanaian chocolatiers to corner any share already staked by long time players in the market, more efforts can perhaps be focused on making the AfCFTA work.

This of course assumes that policymakers will protect the cocoa industry from the threat of galamsey and incentivise Ghana’s long-suffering cocoa farmers to continue producing the best cocoa beans in the world.