The Oloni of Eti-Oni, Osun State and the Founder of International Cocoa Diplomacy (ICD), Oba Dokun Thompson has listed a difficult environment, lack of access to capital and packaging as some of the obstacles hindering increase in chocolate production.
He stated that increasing Nigeria’s chocolate production is easy and possible but that Nigerians are yet to understand the value of cocoa consumption and the fact that the primary and most popular consumption product of cocoa is chocolate.
He lamented that the country at the moment converts only 0.1 percent of its cocoa production output into chocolate through a good number of small batch chocolate makers.
Oba Thompson noted that there is need to understand cocoa and the broad definition in terms of primary production, secondary production and tertiary production and also need to understand the technology that the produce requires to turn it around for that purpose.
“Each phase of the production lines has its use because we see it as raw materials, which are where we keep the maximum value because we don’t have any use for it at the primary and tertiary levels. The secondary is the one that produces industrial products; the tertiary produces finished products- consumable products by the end users.
“Also, because we do not understand the technology that is required for the conversion of cocoa into other products that add more value to it, we do not have access to the machinery because of cost and funding. If we even have it at all, it’s going back to the artistic aspect of it, you will now need to understand how to brand it, how to package it, how to define it.
“Chocolate is defined by their origin, these are parts of the attributes used to define the value of chocolate, we tried to define Nigerian chocolate based on our vibrancy in colours, from our multi-ethnicity, religiosity and others.
He, however, stated that Nigeria has the capacity to increase its production to about 1.5 million tonnes annually, consume most of it and also supply the rest of the African continent before exporting to Europe or America, adding that Nigeria is losing so much in not tapping into the potentials in the chocolate industry.
He said part of the aim of founding the ICD, was to help the country bridge the gap, while creating the culture and also giving the opportunity to create partnership, collaborations and at the same time an opportunity for people to have a better understanding, to create fully grown standard that will address issues around sustainability, climate stuff and other issues.
Speaking further, he said there is a need to create the culture around cocoa and chocolate in the manner in which rice is created into part of our culture.
“After a while, after several uses, we created fried rice from it, we created jollof rice, we created coconut rice, we created all sorts of things and today when you go into some stalls, you will see different flavors of rice mixture. Chocolate can also be done in that manner.”
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