REUTERS
Jaki Kweka is that rare breed of gourmet chocolatier who makes fine chocolate in Tanzania using local ingredients.
Other African companies such as Ghana’s Golden Tree use local cocoa but import milk powder and sugar. Multinationals such as Nestlé mass produce chocolate in South Africa for the continent’s consumers and source ingredients globally.
But few companies match Kweka’s ideal. She uses Tanzanian beans and local sugar to make organic chocolate that is 100 percent African. She packages her bars in recycled maize husks for extra authenticity.
Kweka’s Chocolate Mamas is one of a handful of East African companies carving out a niche in the chocolate world and trying to reverse a trend that has led to the foreign domination of Africa’s growing chocolate economy. Africa produces more than 70 percent of the world’s cocoa, but the $110 billion chocolate industry is dominated by Western companies.
Top cocoa producers Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana lack dairy and sugar industries to compete with the main manufacturers. Cocoa is traded globally, so African bean growers don’t have a competitive advantage when it comes to making chocolate.
Chocolate Mamas’ dark and milk chocolate bars sell at premium prices in high-end shops and hotels in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. They have a devoted following among wealthy Tanzanians, expatriates and tourists.
The company launched in 2012. Kweka began using cocoa from small-scale farmers in southwestern Tanzania after seeing the price of importing baking chocolate from Europe. It took nine months of trial and error to perfect the recipes.
“We found out a lot of things, including that heat and humidity don’t go very well with making chocolate,” said Kweka, a lawyer turned pastry chef.