Ghana is the second-largest exporter of cocoa, the crop that gives us chocolate and releases endorphins throughout our body. Yet, something so sweet, has a tricky history and even trickier economy. Ghanaian chocolatier, Preba Arkaah is making lemonade out of lemons or in this case truffles out of cocoa. She talks to AMAKA about why the local industry of chocolate-making remains underdeveloped.
In 1870, agriculturalist Tetteh Quarshie sailed out from the Gold Coast, present day Ghana, across the Gulf of Guinea to the Spanish colony, Fernando Po (Today’s Bioko in Equatorial Guinea). He returned six years later with cocoa beans from which the backbone of the modern Ghanaian economy sprouted. Observing the success of Quarshie and the attempts of local farmers at cocoa cultivation, Christian missionaries soon stepped in to import more of the crop into the country and oversee the process of scaling up. The British colonial administration quickly took control of this growing industry, dictating the price of production and consumption of chocolate treats in Europe.
Ghana began exporting cocoa in 1891, and between 1910 to 1980 was the world’s largest exporter. Today, Ghana is the second-largest cocoa producer in the world, with the first being its neighbour — Cote D’Ivoire. Although not indigenous to the ecosystem, cocoa is an essential thread in the social and economic fabric of the nation. According to the International Labour Office and Ghana Statistics Service, the cocoa constitutes about 25 percent of Ghana’s total exports and contributes to the livelihoods of approximately four million farming households in the country. It is also a familiar comfort for many. In comes Preba Arkaah, a corporate lawyer turned chocolatier who grew up eating chocolate for breakfast.
The beginnings of a chocolatier
“I credit my father. Should I say credit? Maybe more blame, in that he was a real chocolate lover. There was always chocolate in the house. I had a friend who said our house was the only house they knew where we had three desserts,” Arkaah jokingly shares. “We would have our proper dessert, then we'd have some food, and then we'd have chocolate. Proper Fantes, you know, we couldn’t help ourselves.”
“A lot of people said to me when I started this journey, that Ghanaians don’t eat chocolate and I said, oh yes, they do. They just consume it in a different fashion because I mean, ubiquitous on every Ghanaians breakfast table is a tin of Milo or Bournvita. It’s part and parcel of who we are, how we bring ourselves up, and how we bring our children up,” she adds.
After being an avid chocolate lover for years, in 2018, Arkaah spent time taking a chocolate-making course in Switzerland, where she learned techniques for producing premium chocolate from cocoa beans. Her background as a corporate lawyer also informed her approach to fair trade partnerships and the everyday running of a business. Prior to Mansa Gold, founded in 2020, Arkaah was the Corporate Relations Director of Guinness Ghana Breweries, a subsidiary of the multinational beverage company, Diageo. Aside from providing legal counsel, she was also a member of the executive management team and spent a good deal of time reviewing their marketing and branding, as well as learning how to keep a manufacturing plant going. Although Mansa Gold operates on a smaller scale, these skills still come in handy.
Growth is a process of trying, learning, failing, and trying again. Having spent time studying the properties of cocoa alongside various milks, fruits and seeds, Arkaah’s process of becoming a chocolatier was no different. Opposite an inviting garden in her family home is the small-scale factory where Mansa Gold is made, often through testing, experimentation, and curiosity. During a visit to the premises, I swapped my shoes for clean plastic crocs at the door and stepped into a room of industrial equipment and the filling smell of cocoa. Cocoa being roasted, crushed, ground, made into confiture and set in mounds. For about three hours I assisted Arkaah in the process of making chocolate and was rewarded with the fruit of our labour — heart-warming chocolate and the endorphin rush that comes with its consumption. “The only way you learn is by doing, so the more chocolate you make, the better you get at it and by being really open to feedback and encouraging it. I got a lot of feedback from people and I listened,” Arkaah says.
Although it’s not a family business per se, Mansa Gold involves Arkaah’s two children, Mariah and Oliver Goldstreet, who respectively handle marketing, and oversee operation and distribution. Oliver also deals with the nitty-gritty elements of the business, such as stock checks and supplying the different supermarkets while Mariah spends time ideating innovative ways to reach customers through content production, sales, and immersive experiences. The brand is stocked in major supermarkets and busy cafés throughout Accra. More recently, Mariah has been experimenting with ‘The Chocolate Experience,’ designed to bring people into the chocolate-making process before the product goes on the shelves. During this time, guests are invited to the Mansa Gold factory to witness and participate in the process first-hand, followed by a spread of chocolate, charcuterie and wine/champagne pairings in the garden.
“In Accra, we don’t have a lot of daytime activities that are different so I was very eager to push this experience as an opportunity to the public. Before we were only offering it to people who were in Ghana for maybe one week, two week holidays and we were liaising with tour management people from America and from the UK, who wanted to promote this experience as a niche experience that they could do while here,” Arkaah explains. “While that’s lovely I also wanted to push it as something that people in Accra can do in Ghana. It’s good to understand the process but also what cocoa means to our history and this industry that keeps our country running,” she adds.
Brand identity and design
Unique to Mansa Gold is the bold and striking packaging informed by local flora, birds, and symbols. This was born from the collaboration of Arkaah (an avid bird-watcher) and two designers, Awo and Annertey.
“There's this inside joke we have that Preba is one of the best clients I've ever worked for because she's willing to listen. She's willing to give us room to experiment and do what we have to do,” Annertey begins. “She can tell you all the plants in her garden, all the birds, like she can name everything. She literally just picked up these plants and gave it to us as design inspiration and we were like, okay we can try and make it work. And that’s how we got to what we did with the product design,” Awo chimes in.
“Good design takes time. I didn't want it perfect because you know, life isn't perfect. Nature isn't perfect. It has its inconsistencies. So [our design] has all that and I love it. I love it every day I see it,” says Arkaah. “With Awo and Annertey, working with them was a recommendation from a friend of mine who I think has got the best design ethos I know here in Ghana. She told me a younger person would understand the vision and would give a younger and a more vibrant brand than if you work with someone who's older, you get an older brand, which is the truth and really good advice” she adds.
Barriers to access — Why Ghanaians are still locked out
In An Economic Approach To Ghana’s Colonial Liberation, historian John Wartemberg writes, “A government managed marketing board known as the Cocoa Marketing Board (CMB) was formed in 1947 to buy the cocoa from the farmers and control how and when it was marketed in order to avoid the price fluctuations. The government however, did not act as the middleman for free. The board paid the farmers substantially less money in comparison to the price that was being fetched on international markets and this basically amounted to a tax on the industry. At the time of independence, funds that had been accumulated as a result of this tax totalled one hundred million dollars.” Unfortunately, little has changed on this front.
Cocoa has long had a complicated history — both adored for the pleasure it brings, and behind the invisibilized suffering and exploitation of many. Indigenous to South and Central America, cocoa had spiritual and communal use in communities until European contact increased the demand for cocoa (initially as a drink in cafes around Europe and then the invention of the chocolate bar in 1847). This increased demand elsewhere, which led to increased labour needs, thus creating a boom in farms and plantations throughout colonies in the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia. Despite the value of chocolate, many farmers do not taste the fruit of their labour and make as little as $1 a day in Ghana (standardised by the cocoa board) and $0.78 in Ivory Coast (regulated), both below the poverty line.
This dynamic still informs modern-day policy and trade. Structural challenges such as the restrictions on who can buy cocoa outside of large registered buyers (often foreign companies who manufacture abroad) and the cocoa board makes it difficult for Ghanaians to experiment with cocoa. Arkah’s legal and corporate background allowed her to be innovative with negotiating with cocoa farmers directly to ensure fair pricing and also build personal relationships with the people who are a part of her process. The future of this industry and potential for Ghana to shift from a raw materials supplier to a consumption/production economy, depends on multi-layered changes and Preba Arkaah’s work with Mansa Gold is just the beginning of what could be possible on a larger scale.