On December 17 the Cocoa Honors students were able to make a Skype call half-way around the world and speak with Hillary Miller-Wise, the director of TechnoServe activities in Tanzania. TechnoServe is an organization which provides help to businesses disadvantaged by locale and income. Its Tanzania branch aids small businesses in five industries in that country (cocoa, coffee, cotton, tea, horticulture). Ms. Miller-Wise provided information about the system in Tanzania by which cocoa is sold. In Tanzania, cocoa, after being grown by the farmers, is sold to primary buyers who then move the cocoa to the exporters. However, sometimes the primary buyers take advantage of the farmers and do not pay them nearly as much as the cocoa is worth; TechnoServe is trying to address this information disparity to promote fair trade in Tanzania. The situation is so tragic that many farmers have never even tasted finished chocolate, the fruits of their labor. Ms. Miller-Wise, through her experience with the cocoa industry, was also able to share important knowledge about the quality of the beans in Tanzania. She said that the typical harvest season was mainly between February and July. (Sometimes cocoa is available as early as January or as late as August, but that cocoa is generally of lower quality because it is harvested too early or late.) Finally, Ms. Miller-Wise informed the students that travel was likely to be highly inexpensive inside of Tanzania, which is certainly a bonus.
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Last Friday, Cocoa Honors was visited by Doug Pitt, an expert on traveling to Africa and also an avid Askinosie Chocolate supporter! As we attempt to select cocoa beans from various African countries, Pitt’s visit was of great assistance. Pitt runs an enterprise called “Maji-Tech,” a company that brings clean water to communities in Tanzania and Kenya by drilling deep-water wells. Therefore, Pitt is very familiar with the infrastructure, life and culture of Tanzania, a country of great interest to the Cocoa Honors Team. Being one of our top two choices (the other being Liberia), any access into Tanzania would yield a smoother business transaction in the cocoa industry.
Pitt addressed two of our concerns: shipping and child labor. We’ve recently run into a bump in the road concerning shipping, as we need to ship several metric tons of cocoa beans out of our chosen country. If we do decide that Tanzania is “a winner,” in the words of Pitt, we would need to secure fast and cheap shipping. Pitt guaranteed access by saying, “I can promise you, you’ll have access to shipping.” Also, because child labor is a concern within the African continent, Cocoa Honors requires that any beans purchased are guaranteed to be produced by adults, not children. While Pitt admitted there was truth in our worry, he was confident we could find a good source in Tanzania.
But perhaps the highlight of our meeting surrounded the fact that Pitt recently received the honor of meeting Tanzania’s president, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete. In conversation, chocolate arose, and Pitt mentioned the Cocoa Honor initiative!
In conclusion, this meeting was featured in Springfield’s News-Leader. A link to the article is posted below.
Yesterday, businessman Doug Pitt talked to the Cocoa Honors group about Tanzania. Pitt has made several visits to the area and thinks our project could really benefit the area. To find out more about our meeting read the newest article in the Springfield News-Leader: Pitt tells students about Tanzania
Check back soon for a more in-depth take on the meeting and our progress!
This last Tuesday we had an incredible opportunity to speak with a woman named Musu Flomo whose parents were cocoa farmers, and who is, coincidentally, working in the cocoa industry right now. This was a great experience considering the fact that Musu is not only from one of our two target countries, Liberia, but is also involved in the cocoa industry. This gave us the chance to ask questions regarding almost anything we desired, such as questions pertaining to Liberia and the cocoa industry, as well as the civil war, and her stories from those times. After the crew arrived we began to set up for our meeting with Musu over skype. Despite a few technical difficulties, and about ten minutes of 20 some odd people gathering around Shawn’s i-phone on speaker attempting to hear what was going on, we received a skype call from Mr. Ed Seguine (MARS) and we were finally ready to get started. Shawn opened up with telling Ms. Flomo about our group and what we were doing. He also thanked her for this wonderful opportunity, and then our sourcing team took the floor and the Q&A was finally in session. After finding out much information about the civil war, the cocoa industry, life in Liberia, and many other interesting facts the floor was opened up to whoever had any additional questions, and luckily we had one more very important question. “Can we get a sample?” and we were answered with an excited “of course.” We are currently one step closer to finding Askinosie Chocolate’s brand new, first ever, African single origin chocolate bar. Now comes the hard part: deciding between Tanzania and Liberia.
Don’t miss our article in the News-Leader!
Students speak with a student from Liberia
The Chocolate University students discuss the pros and cons of each country.
On Friday we had our most important meeting yet: deciding our target countries. Over the last few weeks we narrowed down our list of possible countries to four: Tanzania, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, and Ghana. After considerable research each team presented persuasive arguments for why their country should be chosen. In the end we narrowed it down to two, Liberia and Tanzania. Because Liberia is currently in the process of recovering from 14 year long civil war, and is trying to bring back their economy by encouraging foreign investment in their agriculture, it was felt that taking our project there could make an important difference and help spread the word about Liberia’s regenerating economy. Also any difficulties that we might face in the process could lead to an exciting and unique story to accompany this project. We liked Tanzania because of the rare and high quality cocoa beans that are grown there. Also there have been many movements in Tanzania to promote organic farming in all areas of their agriculture, including the cocoa industry. Ghana is not off the list however, should Liberia and Tanzania prove too difficult to get beans from. Now it’s time for us to really get started. The Sourcing team is looking to order samples to make a test batch of chocolate, the Business/Logistics team is figuring out the best way to ship the beans to us, and the Communications team is getting the word out about our project. Things are really starting to get exciting as we get closer to our goal of producing Askinosie’s first African single origin chocolate bar!
Check out the recent article in the Springfield News-Leader:
Central, Drury Students get a taste of the chocolate business
