The chocolate village
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Peter MacJob visits Eti-Oni village in south-west Nigeria, home to the oldest cocoa plantation in the country. It's king, HRH Oba Dokun Thompson, is on a mission to transform the economy of the community by manufacturing chocolates and selling in some of the finest shops across Europe.
Over 90% of Eti-Oni's inhabitants are cocoa farmers and although the cocoa industry is worth almost $130bn a year the money does not flow back to cocoa farmers. To try and change this King Thompson has partnered with Beech's fine chocolate in Preston in the north-west of England.
Presenter / producer: Peter MacJob Image: HRH Oba Dokun Thompson; Credit: HRH Oba Dokun Thompson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Where can you hear all the latest from the Women's World Cup in Australia and New Zealand? |
| 0:05.4 | Some big players, they're electric going forward. |
| 0:08.0 | World Football at the Women's World Cup from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:12.8 | Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:25.6 | Hello, welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. I am Peter Mac Job. |
| 0:27.6 | Today's story is straight out of a fairy tale. |
| 0:31.6 | Once upon a time, in a kingdom, not so far away, a king decided to manufacture chocolate to enrich his kingdom. |
| 0:43.0 | What we're trying to do here is to see how we can optimize what we have in terms of cocoa, |
| 0:49.2 | to see how we can benefit from it in terms of value, |
| 0:53.9 | so that we can begin to transform our community |
| 0:57.0 | into a sustainable model smart town. But it's going to need some help to make this dream a reality. |
| 1:04.6 | The strategy is that we will make the bars in fine chocolate exactly as we do with all our other |
| 1:09.9 | clients, but we will subsidise these bars for him. |
| 1:13.6 | He will then sell them in the Western market, |
| 1:17.0 | exactly as we do. |
| 1:18.5 | But all the profits and proceeds from this brand |
| 1:21.3 | will go back to him in Etiola. |
| 1:23.6 | Thank you. I'm in Itchione in Oshun State, southwest Nigeria. |
| 1:36.0 | It's a rural community and it's quite remote, but it's very green. |
| 1:42.3 | The entire village is surrounded by a thick forest. It is also home to the oldest |
| 1:47.5 | cocoa plantation in Nigeria, spanning over 5,000 hectares. I've come to meet the king, His |
| 1:55.7 | Majesty Thompson, its title, Gourajee I, which also is the name of the range of chocolates this rustic community is about to produce. |
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