Recent studies criticising the global chocolate industry for exploitative practices have concerned ethical consumers.
Cocoa farmers only earn about six per cent of the chocolate industry’s total revenues. Leading chocolate companies have since 2001 made pledges to end widespread abusive labour practices, but continue to fall short.
In Ghana, a local firm, Federated Commodities, has shown it is only by improving the cocoa supply chain, with experienced local oversight, that ethical, sustainable, and profitable cocoa and chocolate industries can exist.
Its Chief Executive Officer, Maria Adamu-Zibo, said she was ready to form international partnerships to take the Ghanian cocoa sector forward.
The Director of Impact at the Fairtrade Foundation, Louisa Cox, cited in a Guardian article suggested that “long-term finance, training, and technical services, and helping farmers diversify beyond cocoa” was needed to help address child labour in the cocoa industry.
These are all measures that FedCo — an indigenous licensed buying company founded in 1996 in Ghana — has a sustained track record of taking.
“As an affiliate company of Global Haulage, FedCo engages in the supply of traceable and certified cocoa beans to help promote sustainability in cocoa production through community development and capacity building of farmers.
“Under this programme, farmers are trained on adult literacy and good agricultural, business and social practices, which empowers them economically,” said Adamu-Zibo, in an interview with AfricaLive.net.
“The well-being of the farmer is of high priority to us. We strive to have a relationship beyond just transactions with the over 50,000 farmers who make up our supply base. We were amongst the first indigenous privately owned firms to go into sustainability.
“FedCo has achieved several milestones since then. We have 300 employees, 1,700 purchasing clerks, a larger fleet of vehicles, as well as an affiliate company that does not only cocoa haulage but also other endeavours related to the industry.”
