Divine Chocolate

Divine Chocolate is a farmer-owned fair trade company in Ghana, where the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative produces high quality cocoa beans. Kuapa Kokoo - which means "good cocoa growers" - has a mission to empower farmers in their efforts to gain a dignified livelihood, to increase women's participation in all of Kuapa's activities, and to develop environmentally friendly cultivation of cocoa.

The Kuapa Kokoo cooperative was created in 1993 when the cocoa market in Ghana became partially liberalized, allowing licensed buying companies to purchase cocoa beans from farmers. A number of cocoa farmers realized they had the opportunity to organize farmers and therefore united to negotiate better prices for their cocoa and empower small farmers. In 1997, the farmers voted to set up a chocolate company of their own in order to return even more benefits to cocoa farmers. With the investment help from Twin Trading, the Body Shop, and Comic Relief, Divine Chocolate was formed (The Body Shop later donated all of its shares to the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative).

Today, the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative represents 45,000 cocoa farmers and allows the farmers to have a secure source of fair trade income. Kuapa Kokoo has invested part of its fair wages to building schools, sinking wells for clean drinking water for villages, providing mobile medical clinics for remote farmers, and fostering women's income generation projects to help women earn additional income for their families when the cocoa season is over.

Photographs by Charlotte Borger.

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