The craftsman of Abidjan, distinguished at the Paris Agriculture Show in March, chose to work with women, transformatives or planters, to enhance cocoa.
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Axel Emmanuel Gbaou talks about cocoa as good wine. “This one has almost no bitterness, the floral aromas explode in the mouth”, he remembers in crunching one of the dried beans on the plots of Ambroise N’Okoh, renowned cocoa planter Azaguié, north of Abidjan, the Ivorian economic capital. He buys her a ton of raw material every year. “His cocoa is organic, agropastoral, it is exceptional”, continues the craftsman.
Chocolatier demanding, Axel Emmanuel Gbaou works with certified organic cocoacultors, fair trade or who have adopted good agricultural practices. It thus marks the “good crus” according to the “terroirs”, of the rainfall or the altitude of the plantations. A requirement that allows it today to make quality chocolate tablets, multi-rewarded and sold all over the world: in Côte d’Ivoire predominantly, but also in the United States, France and Germany.
In March, his Daloa chocolate, Ivorian Western town, was distinguished “Best Chocolate of the World” at the Paris Agricultural Fair. “An intense forest area chocolate in cocoa”, describes the creator of the Ivorian chocolatier brand. According to him, this reward is more than the planners and transformatives he has trained in this region of the cocoa loop. And comes to greet the entrepreneur’s approach: include women’s planters in the brown gold value chain. “At first, I tried to work with men, but it did not work. The ladies are more organized, more structured and do the work with the heart,” he observes.
“Cocoa has built our country”
Since 2016, Axel Emmanuel Gbaou has formed 2,000 women in various cocoa terroirs of the country. In the village of Abbé-Bégnini, north of Abidjan, they are a dozen hushing the dried beans. They then sell them to the chocolatier, minimum 3,000 CFA francs per kilo (4.58 euros), about four times more than market prices. “We are in the world’s first cocoa producing country and we have a million planters who live with less than a dollar a day. It is an untenable situation in the long term,” he says to explain his Approach.
Axel Emmanuel Gbaou then concludes the transformation into his cocody workshop in Abidjan. But now the village women also manufacture their finished products, which ensures additional income. “We make powder to extract cocoa butter. And then, we actually soap that we sell at the market,” explains Eliane N’Guessan, president of the village association. The women of Abbé-Bégnini, would still like to have more material and a room, in order to transform the cocoa into chocolate and “getting out even better” like Mr. Gbaou.
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