Cocoa Kitchen Update

We recently returned from New Koforidua where the cocoa project is taking shape

There are a few things you need to make chocolate - like Guinness it's made using just 4 ingredients - cocoa beans, cocoa butter, powdered milk and sugar. All of these are available locally apart from the cocoa butter so the final piece of the jigsaw was a cocoa extruder.

Cocoa Butter extruding machine - feed in cocoa nibs and it creates both cocoa butter and cocoa powder

We bought the machine, took it from the UK and set it up at the Co-operative House. We headed to the market in Kumasi to buy powdered milk and sugar. The market trader who sold them to us was just 13 years old working through his school holidays to make extra cash for the family. Child labour will always be a problem in Ghana while family incomes are so low, which is why projects to increase incomes are so vital

We bought some Fairtrade cocoa beans from Frederick and started to experiment. Bismarck and Salomey were trained how to make chocolate last year, so they were the experts

Roasting the cocoa beans over an open fire on the veranda

We roasted the beans over an open flame on the veranda and our small team sat around inside winnowing the roasted beans by hand - this involves removing the papery outer husk to get to the cocoa bean which can be broken into nibs. Bismarck operated the machine, with Salomey overseeing the winnowing process. We managed to get a small bottle of cocoa butter which we brought back to the UK to use in our next batch of chocolate, and a huge amount of cocoa powder.

Since we left, Bismarck has been mixing the powder with the milk and sugar and selling it as a delicious chocolate drink to make some cash. In Ghana lots of people have Milo for breakfast which is a hot malted chocolate drink made by Nestle. The opportunity for a locally made alternative where all the money stays in the community is too good to miss.

Just a week after we returned, Semmie was invited to speak to 250 delegates at the International Fair Trade Towns Conference in Edinburgh about the project and our plans for the future

Semmie Fianu - Director of The FIG Tree and Project Manager of The Co-operative House - talks about the project at the 2025 International Fair Trade Towns Conference

Stay tuned for more details of the chocolate making workshops Bismarck is planning and how the model can be spread around the region