Craft Chocolate in Conversation - Talking African Chocolate with Kristy Leissle

17th June 2022
Dr Kristy Leissle (the 'Doc of Choc') joined us in our London office, for a special tasting of African chocolate.
Dr Leissle is one of the world's foremost experts on the cocoa supply chain, and has worked in Ghana for many years, to shed light on the realities and experiences of cocoa farmers there, and in West African generally.
We were also joined by cocoa sourcing professional, Kate Cavallin, who shared her insights of the cocoa and chocolate trade and industry.
If you missed the live session, you can still get the chocolates and follow along with this recording: cocoarunners.com/shop/kristy-...
You can find more Craft Chocolate in Conversation episodes on our site here: cocoarunners.com/craft-chocol...

[@LittleMsExtrasmall]

Thank you for uploading this, I couldn't make it to the livestream. Hopefully, I get to come to one of your tasting sessions soon! Greetings from Vienna.

[@njgrant3988]

U are so STUPID

[@mabelamoah6670]

I was very disappointed with the discussion at the close of your forum...why because I was led to believe that the program was going to be centred around artisanal or craft chocolatiers emerging in Africa. Of course one cannot discuss chocolate without throwing light on cocoa. However I feel the discussion was wholly centred on glorifying a handful of persons of European origin who setup production of chocolate making in Sao Tome and Madagascar. I don't know if the sole intent was to provide a platform to market the two brands that emerged from the two countries ostensibly as African. But these are people who came to setup and rely on the exploits of native people. I was further appalled when in both cases the brands were talked about as though they were benevolent in their orientation ...example in hand was the reference to one of the brands that ostensibly pays above the average wage to the farmers...a mere 2 dollars..Does the panel believe that this arrangement was going to significantly change the status quo...What are the facts...In the value chain of cocoa the price has always been determined by a part of the world that hasn't the slightest clue the enormity of the work at stake ...nor frankly do they care as long as they continue to benefit a great deal..Now let's take a pick into the biases of the contributors. When reference was made to Ghana , I really hoped that light was growing to be shed on the emergence of artisanal local chocolate manufactures...but what do we get...the conversation was deliberately overshadowed by discussions around child labour. Now the problem with ignorant and yet arrogant conception of western commentators on this topic is the sheer lack of understanding of the work ethos of other parts of the world. So westerners continue to believe in the delusional notion that western liberal interpretation of societal norms must be cardinal for the rest of a vast majority of earth's population. My maternal grandparents cultivated nearly 100acres of cocoa plantation in the 1930's 40's and 50's ...during that period crop yields from nursery to planting to maturity took upwards of 7yrs to perhaps 10yrs for cocoa trees to fully mature. Secondly many communities were agrarian..so parents and their children worked together for the prosperity of the family.My grandparents often commuted to the farmsteads that were some 2 or 3 miles away .. sometimes even further. The entire household will set off at about 3a.m . The maturing young members of the family will learn to farm by helping in the farmsteads..whiles suckling ones will be left in the care of a sibling to nurse...this was what characterised the nucleus family. My mother grew up to become an accomplished banker...while my maternal uncle became an acclaimed political scientist and journalist after his studies in Spain..It is unthinkable the my mother and uncle ever regarded their parents as brute child slave owners or master's of their own children. Now where this narrow argument falls flat and problematic is that the very some proponents of such absurdity are the same people who do not shy from exploiting farmers in this place for pure economy of scale..So in the scheme of the aforementioned who is running slave labour farmsteads...is it my grandparents or the foreigner who is entirely undertaking such enterprise in regard to benefitting from paying slave wages which we all must agree will never in a hundred years change the economic fortunes of these farmers.

[@njgrant3988]

Funny how nobody tackled her and he treasurous behaviour. We need to kick them OUT!