Sophiatou A. B. Colliee, Program Manager – Advocacy, Solidaridad Cote d’Ivoire
For me I think for us to move forward with this too much dependency on European market, they dictating the price and also the conversation between their governments and us.
We need to think out of the box and see how we can encourage our population to consume what we produce as cocoa.
We know we cannot eat chocolate. How can we think outside the box and add cocoa in our daily meal?
Because we know in Africa, we have many dishes that we can cook. How to add how cocoa flavour to our daily lunch, daily breakfast, daily dinner. If we can do cocoa soup and fufu or pounded yam or futu banane, like in Cote d’Ivoire, it will change the game.
Because if you are producing something that you can’t consume, it becomes difficult. You have to accept some of the things that the end consumer is dictating. That’s it.
We don’t need to wait for the regulators. We as farmers, we as farmers’ children, we as African chefs, we as civil society organisations that when we need to play our role to sit down and in some thinktank meeting and see, how we can manage to create local dishes with chocolate, with cocoa by-products for us to consume it.
Today, I know there’s a cooperative in Cote d’Ivoire doing cocoa juice. And it’s very nice. I have drunk it, it’s very energetic. We are producing soap with cocoa, charcoal with cocoa by-product, all these things.
Now, how can we add cocoa to our daily dish. In that area we need every to cooperate. Our women and men cooking, who are big chefs, they can sit down do some testing and match it with some local food and it becomes a national dish. That’s it. Because our tongues are not used to chocolate and sweets. We like to eat spicy, peppery and salty dish. So how can we add sugar, salt and pepper together with chocolate and it will suit our consumption? That’s where we need to reach. That will change the dynamics around these commodities. It will reduce the burning.
So basically, we will be selling the surplus and that will attract very good price.
Because I take the oil palm sector, even in Ghana, what we produce as fresh palm branch, we transform it and consume most of it locally. Same with Cote d’Ivoire. We even import some but not too much.
Do you see the oil palm sector is too much depending on external market? No!
It’s because everything we produce as cocoa beans, even if we say we are manufacturing to do cocoa powder it will go, we have to sell it to external people. So external people who buy it they will also dictate the taste the flavour and everything and we need to do it according to their taste.
So, for me if we can even transform and try to eat a quarter of our total production in our daily dish or use it in our cosmetics that we are using and everything we have, how we can transform it to consume it I think there will be a change of game and change of tongue in the system.
Suggestion for crop diversification?
Because we don’t want to think outside the box, we can to run away. For how long will you run away? We have to face the reality and find permanent solution. Those who are consuming chocolate, were not borne eating chocolate. They educated their tongue, their mind to it. We need also to start educating our tongues and minds to it. Maybe not in the form that they are consuming it, but we can transform it in a way that it will be suitable for our consumption and our taste. And be creative, think out of the box and be innovative
