Business
Jaki Kweka and her Chocolate Mamas: Producing Fine African chocolate using African ingredients
A few months ago she and her business partner opened a store at an upmarket shopping plaza in Dar es Salaam with views of the Indian Ocean.
“There is so much un-exhausted potential for making things that are not on the market here,” she said.
Chocolate consumption in sub-Saharan Africa is on the rise. Sales in South Africa, the continent’s largest market, rose to 6.4 billion rand (US$531 million) in 2014 from 5.8 billion rand (US$481 million) in 2013, according to market research firm Nielsen.
South Africa, which does not produce cocoa on a large scale, is also the continent’s biggest chocolate producer. Aside from Nestle, Mondelez and Lindt also have factories.
The most prominent mass-market chocolate maker in West Africa is Ghana’s Cocoa Processing Company, which makes around 1,000 tonnes of chocolate per year under its Golden Tree label.
Golden Tree serves a domestic market and is yet to export its products successfully. On that score, Africa’s most successful wholly-local chocolate brand may be Madecasse, a company founded in Madagascar in 2006.
In Kenya, Naheed Ahmed started Absolute Chocolate in November soon after getting his first taste of fine chocolate at culinary school in South Africa.
He now makes 100 kilograms a month, selling his chili-infused truffles from under glass cases at a shop made to look like a jewellery store in Nairobi’s upscale Village Market.
His nearby factory shows how distant is the dream of an all-African chocolate bar: The machines are Italian, the praline moulds come from Belgium and the sea salt comes from England.
The cocoa comes from Ghana, however. It’s virtually the only African input.
Source: Reuters
