African Cocoa a Golden Ticket for Tanzania Chocolate Factory

Jaki Kweka is that rare breed of gourmet chocolatier. She makes fine chocolate in Africa using local African ingredients.

Other African companies such as Ghana's Golden Tree use local cocoa but import milk powder and sugar. Multinationals such as Nestle mass-produce chocolate in South Africa for the continent's consumers and source ingredients globally.

But few firms match Kweka's ideal — she uses Tanzanian beans and local sugar to make organic chocolate that is 100 percent African. She packages her bars in recycled maize husks for extra authenticity.

Kweka's Chocolate Mamas is one of a handful of East African firms carving out a niche in the chocolate world and seeking to reverse a trend that has led to the foreign domination of Africa's growing chocolate economy.

The firm employs five people and its small size sheds light on a big issue: Africa produces more than 70 percent of the world's cocoa but the $110 billion chocolate industry is dominated by Western companies.

Top cocoa producers Ivory Coast and Ghana lack dairy and sugar industries to compete with the main manufacturers and cocoa is traded globally, so African bean growers don't have a competitive advantage when it comes to making chocolate.

“You don't really find large-scale chocolate manufacturing [by African companies] in sub-Saharan Africa because it's not commercially viable. It's expensive to produce,” said Victoria Crandall, an Ecobank analyst in Ivory Coast.

Chocolate Mamas' dark and milk chocolate bars sell at premium prices in high-end shops and hotels in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, and they have a devoted following among wealthy Tanzanians, expatriates and tourists.

The company launched in 2012 and Kweka began using cocoa from small-scale farmers in southwestern Tanzania after seeing the price of importing baking chocolate from Europe. It took nine months of trial and error to perfect recipes.

“We found out a lot of things, including that heat and humidity don't go very well with making chocolate,” said Kweka, a lawyer turned pastry chef.

A few months ago she and her business partner opened a store at an upmarket shopping plaza in Dar es Salaam with views of the Indian Ocean.

“There is so much unexhausted potential for making things that are not on the market here,” she said.

Билет №29

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Brazil's Olympic Host Rio Has Phones Cut Due to Unpaid Bills

The state government of Rio de Janeiro, which is feverishly preparing for next year's Olympic Games, has failed to pay its phone and Internet bills, triggering a cutoff in service, the phone company responsible said on Friday.

Brazilian telecoms firm Oi SA said it had cut the lines after the state government racked up debt of 170 million reais ($55.7 million) in unpaid internet and telephone bills.

In the midst of funding a number of large infrastructure projects in time for the Olympics, Rio de Janeiro state has seen its tax take fall as a drop in the oil price has reduced oil royalties.

The Olympics are expected to cost nearly 40 billion reais ($13.1 billion), including projects like extending the subway and regenerating the port area of the city of Rio de Janeiro, which though not directly linked to the sporting event are planned to be finished for the Games.

A corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras, based in the city of Rio de Janeiro, capital of the state of the same name, has further slowed investment and hurt the state economy.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's stripped the state of Rio of its investment grade last week citing its weakening finances.

"This total [170 million reais] includes bills which were due over three years ago," Oi told Reuters via email, adding that the company had "for months been trying to negotiate payment with the government."

The cuts to the lines did not affect vital services such as the fire service, schools or hospitals, the company said.

A spokesman for the state government confirmed the lines had been cut, but contested the debt figure and added that Oi also owed the state money.

Negotiations between the state and the company were "advanced,'' he said.

The cost of the Olympics is being borne by Brazil's federal and Rio state and local governments, plus private sector sponsorships. The state's funding share amounts to billions of dollars.

Билет №30

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