Make or break your future: Ghana cocoa

The silos in Tema, built by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah to store cocoa beans and wait for the right price have never hosted a single cocoa bean. The profit of the cocoa business is not in growing cocoa but trading and processing of cocoa beans. The big six players in the market have a good laugh about and Ivory Coast looking down on them only able to grow cocoa and not processing the whole value chain.

From 1934-36 African countries were on a boycott to supply cocoa to Europe. UK-based company Cadbury had formed a cartel to dictate the price of cocoa. It took the UK government intervention to end the boycott. In 1965 Dr. Kwame Nkrumah asked the late Joachim Burmeister from Hamburg-Othmarschen, Germany to establish the CPC Cocoa Processing Company Limited in Tema as he was the world's number one expert in this business (a very fine and humble man he was).

In 2014 CPC Ltd. had to be delisted from the Stock Exchange due to not having presented the required annual fiscal statements. A state-owned enterprise CPC Ltd. is subsidized annually with $ 12-14 Mio. Their past and current products are not only very expensive for ian consumers but also poor in creativity, variety, quality, and marketing. The management is political parties driven not entrepreneurship based.

As I am a white man I was not allowed to buy with the help of foreign investors CPC Ltd to make it profitable and ians proud of themselves. Ocheyhene in his Adabraka Palace promised in 2015 to bring CPC Ltd. into my hands. Late GIPC CEO Mawuena Trebah my sister from another mother sat next to me in that meeting. She was designated to be the CEO of CPC Ltd. with me in the background. The face of CPC Ltd was supposed to be a black face. Still, politically this was not wanted.

Today cocoa farms are destroyed by mercury from galamsey, cocoa farmers are hardly able to feed their families, the EU threatens to stop import of cocoa as traces of chemicals are found in the cocoa beans, and the white man taking advantage of the best cocoa in the world, and speculation of international investors against the cocoa price. Ivory Coast and combined present 60-70% of the world market of cocoa working side by side instead of together.

Speculation on finished products like chocolates and pralines is never possible. Why does still allow foreign companies to create a market and make their mark in the country and not create a market in which to make its mark? For how long should watch the white man laugh at this great nation in this business segment? To produce chocolates is not rocket science and marketing not the mystery of the white man.

It is in the hands of ians to make or break their glorious future.