BECOME A FAN
FOLLOW US
Kuapa Kokoo
Introduction
At A Glance
| Where: | Throughout Ghana (main office in Kumasi) |
| What: | Cocoa-producing cooperative; international chocolate marketing and distribution company |
| Founders: | Nana Frimpong Abebrese II |
| Year Founded: | 1993 |
| Number of employees: | 300 staff, 45,000 members |
| Total revenue: | (2005) US $77,711,409.47 / 699,472,632,510 Ghanian cedis (GHC) |
| Website: | www.kuapakokoogh.com |
“The vision of our cooperative is to become a leading, caring, efficient farmer-based organization and the most globally recognized cooperative in cocoa production and marketing.” That’s how Paul “PCK” Buah, president of the Kuapa Kokoo Farmers Union, describes his community food enterprise’s mission in a 2007 annual report. As Ghana’s largest farmer cooperative, representing 45,000 cocoa growers, Kuapa Kokoo aims to be a “formidable Farmer-Based Organization” that can “mobilize and motivate its stakeholders to produce and market quality cocoa and cocoa products, improve members' livelihood, and satisfy consumers.”
Kuapa Kokoo also owns 45% of its own chocolate company in the United Kingdom and a 33% of its sister company in the United States. “Our business is one hundred percent controlled locally,” says PCK. “Our farmers control what they produce and sell. This mode of operating allows us to control our own product and how it is marketed in order to optimize our profits and dividends, and through that, sustain our existence and survival.”
Kuapa Kokoo is one of the world’s first fair trade-certified, farmer-owned organizations, and is the first to be the majority shareholder in its own chocolate company. The fair trade movement aims to minimize the role of the middleman and return the savings to farmers, which is in line with Kuapa Kokoo’s commitment to raising the standard of living of thousands of Ghanaian cocoa farmers.
