Kuapa Kokoo: Ghanaian Cocoa Co-operative
A co-operative with close to 100,000 members and tens of thousands of farmers supplying cocoa every season, Kuapa Kokoo is one of Ghana's large "registered buying companies" for Cocoa. Kuapa Kokoo is a democratic farmer-owned co-op, trading since the early 1990's.
The company is based in Kumasi in central Ghana, with more than 60 depots scattered around the country buying cocoa throughout the buying seasons from more than 2,000 farmer-societies.
Kuapa Kokoo owns shares in UK-based chocolate company Divine Chocolate which pays dividends to Kuapa which are passed on as a special bonus to farmer-members.
The company is one of the largest organisations by numbers of farmer that is certified FLO-Fairtrade. Managing this complex certificiation process poses massive challenges. Kuapa Kokoo's Orixa system helps them to document farmer memberships, purchases and bonus payments to ensure that they can achieve and maintain their certified status.
About Kuapa Kokoo
Kuapa Kokoo Staff with Cocoa Seedlings
Kuapa Kokoo is formed of the central Co-operative "KKFU", a limited-liability buying company "KKL" which manages the purchasing and sale of Kokoo, Kuapa Kokoo Transport Limited which owns and runs hundreds of trucks moving cocoa around the country. The whole organisation runs and manages numerous projects and programs which are targetted to benefit farmers.
These include projects relating to reduction of Child-labour in cocoa production, distribution of improved quality cocoa seedlings, gender-equality training and many others.
As well as being FLO-Fairtrade certified, Kuapa Kokoo also has UTZ certification to enable it to sell cocoa to Ferrero.