Cocoa is the king of Ghana's cash crops, bringing about $3bn a year into the national kitty. Ever since an indigene, Tetteh Quarshie, brought some pods into the country from Fernando Po in modern-day Equatorial Guinea, Ghana has mostly exported its cocoa produce in raw form, thus retaining only a fraction of the potential value from the crop.
With about $130bn in value of the global chocolate market to play for, Ghana, along with Côte d'Ivoire and other African producers, is looking for ways to move up the value chain and disrupt the current model where it exports the raw products and imports the finished products at a significant markup.
One of the private initiatives that is supporting this aspiration is Plot Enterprise. With support from Africa Export-Import Bank, Plot Enterprise is processing Ghanaian beans locally, entering a market that has long been dominated by multinationals.
Patricia Poku-Diaby, Ghanaian industrialist and founder and CEO of Plot Enterprise, argues that while "Cocoa is Ghana and Ghana is cocoa", the country must move beyond exporting raw beans if the crop is to retain its position as one of the key drivers of Ghana's economy. "That is why I decided to go into processing to add value to cocoa instead of just exporting the raw beans. It's a way of also contributing to national development," she says of her rationale.
Originally published by African Business.