Làm thế nào Tây Phi có thể thu được nhiều lợi nhuận hơn từ thị trường sô cô la toàn cầu?

châu phi trồng 70% hạt cocoa nhưng chỉ sản xuất 1% sô cô la,

Fairafric ban đầu là chiến dịch gọi vốn cộng đồng năm 2015, rồi một doanh nghiệp gia đình sản xuất sô cô la của Đức mua cổ phần năm 2019, thêm khoản vay 2 triệu usd từ ngân hàng phát triển đức năm 2020 -> giờ đây đang xây nhà máy ở Ghana (nước xuất khẩu cocoa nhiều thứ 2 thế giới, sau Bờ Biển Ngà), để giữ lại nhiều doanh thu và lợi nhuận hơn ở nước này, hỗ trợ các doanh nghiệp khác địa phương (như sản xuất giấy gói kẹo...)

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...The global chocolate industry (ngành sô cô la toàn cầu) is a multibillion-dollar confection (ngành bánh kẹo), and Africa grows 70 percent of the world’s raw cocoa beans. But it produces only 1 percent of the chocolate — missing out on a part of the business that generates the biggest returns and is dominated by American and European multinationals (công ty đa quốc gia).

Capturing a bigger share of the profits generated by chocolate sales and keeping them in Ghana — the second-largest cocoa exporter behind Ivory Coast — is the animating vision behind Fairafric. The aim is to manufacture the chocolate and create stable, well-paying jobs in the place where farmers grow the cocoa.

Many developing countries are lucky to have large reserves of natural resources (trữ lượng tài nguyên thiên nhiên). In Ghana, it’s cocoa. In Botswana, it’s diamonds. In Nigeria and Azerbaijan, it’s oil. But the commodity blessing can become a curse (lời nguyền) when the sector sucks up an outsize share of labor and capital, which in turn hampers the economy (cản trở nền kinh tế) from diversifying and stunts long-term growth.

...Fairafric might not have succeeded if its founder and chief executive — a German social-minded entrepreneur named Hendrik Reimers — had not upended the status quo.

The pattern of exporting cheap raw materials to richer countries that use them to manufacture valuable finished goods is a hangover from colonial days (tàn dư thời thuộc địa). Growing and harvesting cocoa is the lowest-paid link in the chocolate value chain. The result is that farmers receive a mere 5 or 6 percent of what a chocolate bar sells for in Paris, Chicago or Tokyo.

...Fairafric started with a crowdsourced fund-raising campaign in 2015. A family-owned chocolate company in Germany bought a stake in 2019 and turned Fairafric into a subsidiary.

In 2020, a low-interest loan of 2 million euros from a German development bank that supports investments in Africa by European companies was crucial to getting the venture off the ground.

Fairafric, which buys beans from roughly 70 small farmers in the eastern region of Ghana, goes further, paying a premium for its organically grown beans — an additional $600 per ton above the global market price.