Where did it all begin?
Agnes: Nana and I were working together in a firm, that we really loved, unfortunately the work dynamic didn’t allow for family life and so when Nana was about to get married she sadly had to leave. During that time, she was doing private projects for one of her private clients who ended up becoming one of the major real estate companies in Ghana, so she worked for him on a project which ended up being very successful, people liked it and wanted the same style because it was so refreshing in the city.
This particular project built success for the client and in turn for us, one building therefore became two and the two became three and eventually she had to register a company and 8 years on we are a 50 staff strong company. Our guiding principal has been to do excellent work no matter what it takes, and to answer the questions that the client and the site bring to us.
One then has to analyse what the site has and what the market trends are in order to give the best answers that may sometimes differ with what the client desires. Sometimes the answer is something that the client may not have even conceived. When you take this approach the results are always amazing.
Was it challenging to make it to the top in a male dominated industry?
Agnes: For both of us, straight out of school our first long employment period was with a female architect and so we do not know anything else, she made it seem normal to be a female architect and I guess that explains why we had a very positive approach when we started our own careers as architects.
There is no one point at which we stopped to think about the issue of gender. There are still moments when you go to site or for meetings and you would be the only female or even the youngest. Sometimes clients who see our work expect to have seen work done by older men. The bottom-line is that we don’t really feel the difference even though we know we are in a male dominated industry, I think its all a matter of perspective.
For instance, Nana once asked the son if he wanted to become an Architect and his answer was hilarious, he said to Nana “Mama I am not a girl” because in his perspective he has grown up thinking Architecture was a girls world when the world’s view is totally different.
How do you manage to keep it fresh?
Nana: We treat every project as being unique in itself, so for every project we start from scratch. we typically start by analysing the site and seeing the context, after which we research on what the client wants and for example if it’s a commercial project we look at what is missing or what can be added to it, only then do we start designing. Each project therefore starts from scratch and each one is tailor made to a particular client and to a particular site at the time it is conceived.
Our projects aspire to answer questions or fill any void that we observe at the time we are executing the project. Maybe that answers why every project looks excellent because the spirit and the thinking of the end product is always at the best they can be.
Why do you have so much affinity for green technology?
Nana: Africa is developing very fast and with the development you can tell that there is a race far ahead of planning. I think it is important for us to be responsible in how we live with the nature around us. At Archxenus we are very sensitive about sustainability.
It actually forms the basis of our design. In the tropics, orientation bioclimatic design already influences how the building is placed in the site to catch light and to allow for ventilation, it is those sensitive elements that if in co-operated in non traditional buildings with the thinking of being environmentally responsible amount to green architecture.
We are passers by on this earth, we will leave this earth for the people coming after us, just as it was left for us, so its important that in our strive to be dominant and to make statements, we be sensitive to the Environment.
What are some of your highlights as a company?
Nana: One of the greatest highlights is being able to combine work and life. Typically work is separate from life but here we try to see that mothers are able to bring their children to work if they need to, and that one can leave in the middle of the day and go to the bank if they need to, or even get their nails done, provided that they are able to meet the timelines and work at their optimum with the freedom of being flexible which allows for creativity and goes hand in hand with the responsibility to be as high performing as possible.
Another highlight is the opportunity to have interns, a good example is an intern who was with us for a year and later left to go and work some where else. This intern entered into an international competition and came second.
I personally found it so fulfilling to look back to the fact that even though we didn’t take part in the competition that some thing we had taught or passed on was living on and making an impact elsewhere. Another aspect that has been so fulfilling has been seeing how much people enjoy the spaces we design after one of our buildings are completed and the users begin to use the space.
I still have a fresh memory of a bank we did recently. A lady who was passing by during the final day of inspections stopped and asked if she could take pictures and we wondered why, so she told us that the father used to own the building and that he would have been so happy to see what we had done to it and I thought that was really nice. She probably wasn’t going to be a user of the space herself but the mere fact that we are able to give that kind of joy to a passer by or a user who wasn’t a part of our plan is for us priceless.
What do you attribute your success to?
Agnes: It can only be God. there is nothing we could have done in such a short time, besides, I believe that when He gives you the gift and blesses you with the opportunity, then you should work hard and give your best at all time.
However, all that is insignificant compared to the favour that He has granted us. I think that apart from all that, its about having a good support network. Having husbands who care and understand and even when we sometimes have crazy deadlines that get us to work strange hours they still edge us on and encourage you to strive for excellence. Our other major asset is having a good team who have the same zeal and the drive to want to be part of achieving the same things we want to achieve.
What do the Awards means to you?
Agnes: The awards to us simply mark recognition of something we did in the past. They also reminds us that there is much more to do and that what we do now must have an impact and be recognizable in the future, so although it marks the past it edges us on to do better and push for more in the future.
How do you want to be remembered?
Agnes: I see Africa as the next frontier, America and Europe have developed to reach their peak, so even though development is still ongoing, its not as rapid as it maybe in Africa. China on the other hand, has developed in the last 25 years from a majorly low income economy to one of the largest middle class economies.
Africa is projected to become one of the most densely urbanised continents. We may owe our slow rate of development to many things including colonialism but even after independence we haven’t really developed speedily as we should have. With that as a background I think we are well positioned as long as we keep in this track without being arrogant and follow God’s leading, to see quite a significant change and development in Africa.
With that in mind, I hope that when we are gone 50 to 100 years from now that we are remembered as the Africans who studied and lived in their continent and did right for the continent. I hope our company will be remembered as one that was able to offer solutions that our continent needed within its context and to design buildings for work and living that suited our people and that were not pegged in the past but relevant for the time we lived in and also for the future. I would like that through our work we are able to create employment and hope and direction for people and also inspiration so that people looking 100 years on will be challenged to say that if these girls were able to do this then I guess we can do even better now.
What else does your company do apart from architecture?
Nana: We do three major things. We consult, we design, we build and we develop. In fact there is a new thing going on of architects getting into asset developing. We find that when we are able to develop a project on our own there is a lot more freedom and problem solving that is different from when a client engages you with a clear objective of what it is they want to achieve which can be rather limiting. It enables us to identify a social challenge and be able to throw our weight behind it using our creativity and our wealth of experience to offer the best solution.
What lessons have you learnt that you would like to share with the youth?
Agnes: For just over a decade, we have had the opportunity and honour to have young people work with us mostly as interns. Sometimes we have had students coming from various schools to work and learn with us. what I usually tell them is that they shouldn’t despise their youth as most African youth especially in Ghana who think that when you are young, then you should simply keep quiet and let the adults talk. Instead they should use the opportunity as a platform to expand their knowledge and to propose new ideas since the youth really don’t have much to loose.
They need to know that it is while colouring outside the lines that you are able to create something exceptional. They should also be aware of the fact that the dark skin God gave us, makes us stand out and that it can be a problem in itself in certain circles. The way to fix it is to be at the top of your game, be excellent, be the best at what you do, then it will not matter where you come from because success has no colour. Excellence speaks.
They should always remember that the best things don’t come easy so they have to push hard until it happens. Finally they should learn to trust and fear God, and be exceptional.
]]>But where does this cherished product originate? West Africa collectively supplies two thirds of the world’s cocoa crop, with Ivory Coast leading production at 1.8 million tonnes as of 2017, and nearby Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Togo producing additional 1.55 million tonnes.
Ivory Coast
The cocoa market is experience volatility at the moment that could pose a serious problem for the cocoa value chain. In October 2016 , the Ivory Coast government set a mandatory minimum farm gate price and with the global market offering less than the government asking price, buyers backed out and processing facilities shut down waiting for higher market prices. Exporters who secured rights to purchase cocoa in bulk also backed out. In addition, before the 2016/17 season, poor weather had reduced global cocoa supply. As expected, lower production in Ivory Coast and Ghana led to a spike in prices for the first half of 2016.
Cocoa farmers in Ivory Coast bet big on a continued slump following another weak harvest. Cocoa exporters bid on contracts before any real trends could be established in the October-March harvest season. These orders were used to set a minimum farm gate price by the Conseil Cafe Cacao (CCC), the regulatory body for cocoa and coffee in Ivory Coast. The price was set at 1,100 CFA francs per kilogram for the 2016-17 marketing year in October 2016, just as the harvest was set to begin.
Speculation on a market as opaque as cocoa includes inherent risks which may lead to big losses. The traders thought another poor harvest was just around the corner and bet prices would rise. Therefore, a combination of good weather and slumping cocoa demand could spell trouble for Ivory Coast. Increased rainfall began with the October-March harvest in West Africa, which was good news for farmers hoping for a better season.
Within the same period, there was also a lack of demand in Europe. The common measure for cocoa demand, grindings, stagnated. Possible causes for the downturn include worries over Brexit, a hot summer, and recent wellness trends. By the time farmers were ready to sell, the prices that wholesalers were willing to pay were already lower than Ivory Coast’s set farm gate price.
Exporters and producers could not purchase cocoa at the price set by the CCC if they wanted to make a profit. Trucks laden with cocoa sat at ports for months due to a lack of buyers. Of the purchases that were completed, several were rejected because of rotten beans. Ivory Coast’s miscalculation is a costly one for the country. Cocoa beans, paste, and butter account for 40.2 per cent of Ivory Coast’s exports by value. Ivory Coast had to review its 2017 budget because of the drop in sales. The West African country also asked for additional funds from the International Monetary Fund to cushion it going forward.
However, prices have inched back up in recent weeks, indicating that the worst of the crisis may be over. The fact that so much chaos could come from an ostensibly positive event suggests that there are structural problems in the Ivory Coast cocoa sector that need to be addressed. A regulatory system that better protects cocoa farmers during times of crisis would also reduce the risk of meltdown in market mechanisms.
GHANA
Ghana is the world’s second largest cocoa producer with an annual production of 750, 000 to a million tones putting its total share in the global market at 20%. In the past decade, the chocolate industry’s demand for the product has gone up 12 per cent but production has stagnated.
While the demand, especially from developed economies like India and China is a positive sign for the Industry, the more than 6 million cocoa producers, most of whom are small-scale farmers, face a myriad of challenges ranging from poverty, poor connection to infrastructure from producers to consumers.
But the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) established in 1947 has had a history of overseeing the sector, ensuring that it remains on track despite the challenges. The board serves as the only exclusive marketing intermediary between producers and processors of the crop.
The marketing year for cocoa begins in October, when harvest of the main crop begins, followed by the harvest of a smaller “light crop” in July. Light-crop beans are smaller than the main-crop variety, but are identical in quality and grown on the same trees. The main crop accounts for 90 per cent of total annual cocoa bean production in the country, and the light crop accounts for the remaining 10 per cent.
During the 2015/2016 harvesting season the country produced approximately 800,000 metric tones , which was 20 per cent of the total world harvest.
Until a couple of years ago, cocoa generated around a third of Ghana’s export earnings. This share decreased due to the start of oil production. In 2014, cocoa was the third largest export product with a share of 20 per cent. It is estimated that during the 2016/17 a total output of 850,000 will be produced.
Collective cocoa bean purchases by the Ghana Cocoa Board in the 2015/2016 season reached 778,000 tones, representing an increase of around 38,000 tones compared to the previous season. Although production fell short of the Government’s estimated target, it exceeded the low level of the previous season.
For the 2016/2017 season, the Government announced an increase of the guaranteed price paid to cocoa farmers to GH¢7,600 per ton (US$1,914). As at 22nd October 2016, cocoa purchases in Ghana, as reported by News Agencies, reached approximately 200,000 tones.
Cocoa production in Ghana remains a major contributor to the tax income of the government. There are approximately 800,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana. Cocoa is grown on an estimated 1.9 million hectares. The cocoa industry employs about 60 per cent of the total labor force of the agriculture sector; most cocoa farmers are smallholders who harvest cocoa on 2 to 3 hectares with a yield of on average 400 kg/ha. Including families of farmers, employees of trading companies and input services, the cocoa sector provides income for more than 1 million Ghanaians.
The cocoa sector is one of Ghana’s economic backbones. Ghana is not only the second largest producer of cocoa in the world, but it produces the world’s highest quality cocoa. The cash crop accounts for about 9% of Ghana’s GDP and makes up about one-third of the country’s export revenues, totaling over US$ 1.5 billion.
Additionally, cocoa is an important tool to guarantee the liquidity of the Ghanaian government. Every year, the government issues a bond, which is secured by the predicted income from selling the cocoa of the next harvest. Potential investors know that due to the forward cocoa selling system the bond is a low risk investment. The Ghanaian government pays for the bond at much lower interest rates than it would have to pay for a bank loan.
Which trends offer opportunities on the European cocoa market?
The popularity of chocolate is growing. This results in a stronger demand for high-quality, fine flavor cocoa in Europe. While Ivory Coast and Ghana remain the largest suppliers of cocoa to Europe, their share is decreasing.
Latin American suppliers are increasing their market share, as sustainability is increasingly important on the European chocolate market. Consumers want to know more about the context of cocoa production, and the impact of their purchases.
In Europe, growing demand for chocolate is in traditional consuming countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Consumption in this segment is associated with higher incomes but also with consumer awareness and market exposure.
This trend is especially driven by a small group of educated, loyal and casual consumers (for example, seasonal shoppers during festivities such as Easter and Christmas)
]]>Markets and Pricing
The cocoa market has been on a wild ride over the past year. Between July 2016 and July 2017, global cocoa prices fell by more than a third. Production of the crop was expected to shrink due to poor weather in some key growing regions, leading to increased prices. But, the opposite ended up happening. There was plenty of rain, and current estimates suggest global production will increase by 15 per cent in the 2016-17 season from the previous year.
Whereas a definite amount of unpredictability is projected, the price sink exposes serious pain points in the cocoa value chain. Much of the decline came after the Ivory Coast government set the mandatory minimum farm gate price in October 2016. With the global market offering less than the government asking price, buyers have backed out. Processing facilities have shut down, waiting for higher market prices. Exporters, having secured rights to purchase cocoa in bulk, are declining to exercise them.
Prices have inched back up in recent weeks, indicating that the worst of the crisis may be over. The fact that so much chaos could come from an ostensibly positive event suggests that there are structural problems in the country’s cocoa sector that need to be addressed. A regulatory system that better protects cocoa farmers during times of crisis would also reduce the risk of meltdown in market mechanisms.
Before the 2016/17 season, poor weather had reduced global cocoa supply. As expected, lower production in Ivory Coast and Ghana led to a spike in prices for the first half of 2016.
Ivory Coast bet big on a continued slump following another weak harvest. Cocoa exporters bid on contracts before any real trends could be established in the October-March harvest season. These orders were used to set a minimum farm gate price by the Conseil Cafe Cacao (CCC), the regulatory body for cocoa and coffee in Ivory Coast. The price was set at 1,100 CFA francs per kilogram for the 2016-17 marketing year in October 2016, just as the harvest was set to begin.
Speculation on a market as opaque as cocoa includes inherent risks which may lead to big losses. The traders thought another poor harvest was just around the corner and bet prices would rise. Therefore, a combination of good weather and slumping cocoa demand could spell trouble for Ivory Coast. Increased rainfall began with the October-March harvest in West Africa, which was good news for farmers hoping for a better season.
Within the same period, there was also a lack of demand in Europe. The common measure for cocoa demand, grindings, stagnated. Possible causes for the downturn include worries over Brexit, a hot summer, and recent wellness trends. By the time farmers were ready to sell, the prices that wholesalers were willing to pay were already lower than Ivory Coast’s set farm gate price.
Exporters and producers could not purchase cocoa at the price set by the CCC if they wanted to make a profit. Trucks laden with cocoa sat at ports for months due to a lack of buyers. Of the purchases that were completed, several were rejected because of rotten beans. Ivory Coast’s miscalculation is a costly one for the country. Cocoa beans, paste, and butter account for 40.2 per cent of Ivory Coast’s exports by value. Ivory Coast had to review its 2017 budget because of the drop in sales. The West African country also asked for additional funds from the International Monetary Fund to cushion it going forward.
Ghana
Ghana is the world’s second largest cocoa producer with an annual production of 750, 000 to I million tones. In the past decade, the chocolate industry’s demand for the product has gone up 12 per cent but production has stagnated.
While the demand, especially from developed economies like India and China is a positive sign for the Industry, the more than 6 million cocoa producers, most of whom are small-scale farmers, face a myriad of challenges ranging from poverty, poor connection to infrastructure from producers to consumers.
But the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) established in 1947 has had a history of overseeing the sector, ensuring that it remains on track despite the challenges.
The board serves as the only exclusive marketing intermediary between producers and processors of the crop.
Markets and pricing
The global market share for this second leading cocoa producer is estimated at 20 per cent.
The marketing year for cocoa begins in October, when harvest of the main crop begins, followed by the harvest of a smaller “light crop” in July. Light-crop beans are smaller than the main-crop variety, but are identical in quality and grown on the same trees. The main crop accounts for 90 per cent of total annual cocoa bean production in the country, and the light crop accounts for the remaining 10 per cent.
During the 2015/2016 harvesting season the country produced approximately 800,000 metric tones , which was 20 per cent of the total world harvest.
Until a couple of years ago, cocoa generated around a third of Ghana’s export earnings. This share decreased due to the start of oil production. In 2014, cocoa was the third largest export product with a share of 20 per cent.
It is estimated that during the 2016/17 a total output of 850,000 will be produced.
Collective cocoa bean purchases by the Ghana Cocoa Board in the 2015/2016 season reached 778,000 tones, representing an increase of around 38,000 tones compared to the previous season. Although production fell short of the Government’s estimated target, it exceeded the low level of the previous season.
For the 2016/2017 season, the Government announced an increase of the guaranteed price paid to cocoa farmers to GH¢7,600 per tone (US$1,914) As at 22nd October 2016, cocoa purchases in Ghana, as reported by News Agencies, reached approximately 200,000 tones.
Cocoa production in Ghana was and is a major contributor to the tax income of the government. There are approximately 800,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana. Cocoa is grown on an estimated 1.9 million hectares. The cocoa industry employs about 60 per cent of the total labor force of the agriculture sector; most cocoa farmers are smallholders who harvest cocoa on 2 to 3 hectares with a yield of on average 400 kg/ha. Including families of farmers, employees of trading companies and input services, the cocoa sector provides income for more than 1 million Ghanaians.
The cocoa sector is one of Ghana’s economic backbones. Ghana is not only the second largest producer of cocoa in the world, but it produces the world’s highest quality cocoa. The cash crop accounts for about 9% of Ghana’s GDP and makes up about one-third of the country’s export revenues, totaling over US$ 1.5 billion.
Additionally, cocoa is an important tool to guarantee the liquidity of the Ghanaian government. The government issues every year a bond, which is secured by the predicted income from selling the cocoa of the next harvest. Potential investors know that due to the forward cocoa selling system the bond is a low risk investment. The Ghanaian government pays for the bond at much lower interest rates than it would have to pay for a bank loan.
Conclusion
Cocoa traders speculating on the continued rise of cocoa prices in mid-2016 were proven wrong after a bumper crop in West Africa saw production quantity jump by double digits. Traders in both Ivory Coast and Ghana were already locked into trade agreements requiring them to purchase, if they chose to, well above the current market price. Archaic rules that were supposed to help farmers led to a disaster for them and a serious inconvenience for many others.
Cocoa, like coffee, is one of a handful of agricultural commodities grown exclusively in tropical regions and consumed overwhelmingly in Europe and North America. Cocoa, however, is more extreme than coffee in how uneven its value chain is, funneling only a small fraction of its final retail value back to farmers.
The continued presence of quasi-governmental organizations like Ivory Coast’s CCC and Ghana’s COCOBOD likely causes much of this dysfunction by adding an extra layer between the world market and the farmers who trade with it.
Small-scale cocoa farmers are so removed from the final product that many of them have never seen chocolate, let alone tasted it. Consequently, when cocoa prices tumble, cocoa farmers’ income may fall dramatically while chocolate manufacturers and consumers may not even notice the price difference. And that leaves trade on the crop at relatively stable position.
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