“Gari In Chocolate?”: My Biggest Realization About African Chocolate, While Exhibiting In Nigeria

Can you imagine I’d been searching everywhere for my Ghana card (National ID) since September 2021, only to find it in a hotel in Victoria Island, Lagos, in Nigeria?

Never mind, let’s talk about the other thing I found in Nigeria: a realization about African chocolate.

Some context first: I was at the just-ended Eko Chocolate Show in Lagos, Nigeria. The annual show, founded by His Royal Majesty Oba Dokun Thompson Gureje IV, the Oloni of Eti-Oni, brings together chocolate makers, investors, and consumers. The aim is to bridge the gap between these three to create a cocoa-chocolate culture in Nigeria.

This year’s show was from 7 to 11 April 2022, and I was there as a rep of the African Cocoa & Chocolate Expo. To feel the Cocoa Industry Renaissance in Nigeria, and to gather inspiring stories from our friends there.

Now, what happened:

Three of us, non-chocolatier exhibitors (Musa, Kevin, I) had to showcase cocoa products from three Ghanaian brands to the people of Lagos. We had cocoa crunches, tea, and nibs from Ohene Cocoa. We also had cocoa powder from Golden Pod. Then we had 4 chocolate bars from Bioko Treats.

By 11 AM on Saturday 9 April, we had arranged our products on the ground floor of the Silverbird Galleria. Uncle Musa, our driver, had helped us with the setup as he saw the Ohene Cocoa team do it back in Ghana. We were proud of our creation. And we were ready: Kevin (Marketing guy) was in charge of the money. Uncle Musa kept watch and directed people to our table. I had to do the talking.

And the people came. Many of them.

We showed them our products. Encouraged them to taste the crunches mixed with ginger, coconut, or peanut. They loved them. And they got them.

We then directed their gaze toward the 4 different Bioko bars (Intense Milk, Intense Dark, Caramel Crunch, Gari & Peanut Butter). They looked, and when they saw the one in the middle:

“What?” “Seriously?” “Gari Peanut Butter Chocolate? So there is gari in this?”
“Oh yes. Would you like to try it?” I wanted them to. No, I needed them to. Badly.
“Of course! I’d love to.”

(Note: garri is the creamy granular flour obtained by processing the starchy tuberous roots of freshly harvested cassava.)

And each time someone tasted, I’d watch their face closely, and often they’d nod their head, looking up, and then smile, as if – finally- they’d recognized an old friend, or that one time in their childhood.

It was refreshing, because each time, that look meant we were going to make money. But don’t mind me – something interesting was happening:

At the end of that exhibition, Bioko’s Gari & Peanut Butter sold way more than its Intense Milk and Caramel Crunch siblings. And you know what? NO ONE ASKED TO TASTE the other two.

And that’s when, for the first time, I asked myself: Benjamin, what’s African Chocolate?

Right there at the Silverbird Galleria, I realized, with little surprise:

That Nigerians want to experience Gari through chocolate, ginger through chocolate, peanut through chocolate. Tunde wants to taste Nigeria in chocolate. But caramel is not Nigerian. And I, for instance, never knew about caramel until I saw it on a Bioko Bar.

So, my realization?

Well. It’s that for more people to consume cocoa products in Africa, especially chocolate, we must make it for the African.

This means that we must know what taste or flavor the African is familiar with, and give it to her.

We must make chocolate taste like something the African can recognize even before you mention it. Like pepper, like ginger, like peanut, like – yes – Gari, or like Egusi, even alligator pepper.

The alternative is to force or hope for Africans to acquire and desire tastes alien to their food culture. Like vanilla, like strawberry, like hazelnut, like caramel.

But that is harder. And it will take you longer, plus, are you going to import all the time?

The truth, for me, is this:

The people of Nigeria didn’t see chocolate before gari. They saw gari, and wanted to taste it by pretending to eat chocolate.

Can we, then, make chocolate a bus trip to familiar African lands…I mean… tastes? Or flavors? Can we make truly African chocolate for the African? If the African living in a land far far away picked up a bar of African Chocolate and tastes it, will it remind him of home?

We shall revisit this. But for now, thank you for your wonderful company. It means so much to me.
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