Transforming Africa with Chocolate

She is a graduate of the prestigious Raymond Ackermann Academy at Africa's leading business school, the University of Cape Town Graduate School Of Business.

She is a tried and tested Entrepreneur with a habit of never saying, "I give up!"

She is out on a mission to transform African development with chocolate.

Yep, that brown silky stuff that turns gooey above 30 degrees Celsius and is, by many accounts, the closest thing to heaven for the female of the species.

She is Nontwenhle Mchunu, the Winner of the South African Businesswomen's Association 2008 Regional Business Achiever Awards in the Social Entrepreneur category.

This remarkable lady, whom I had the singular honour of meeting recently in Cape Town, has thrilled audiences everywhere she has spoken, most recently at a high-powered confab in August at Cape Town where she recounted how her journey, begun when she was barely twenty, has progressed from a simple desire to make great-tasting chocolate to a haute cuisine brand by name: Ezulwini Chocolat.

As Executive Director of the upstart confectionery firm, Nontwenhle must move between her role model for young South Africans status and the octane-filled world of consumer business where she is cutting her teeth, not least as a protégé of Raymond Ackermann, the warm and public-spirited multi-millionaire Patriarch of the Pick-n-Pay global retail behemoth.

Nontwenhle's main beef is the fact that West Africa alone produces more than 70% of the world's cocoa - the raw material from which chocolates are made- with Ghana alone poised to increase production by as much as 20% over the course of the next few years. Yet, Africa has no premium chocolate brand worth the bother to its name.

Indeed, a great hullabaloo blew up recently when Ghana threatened to sue over copyright infringements after a shadowy Japanese chocolate company begun to brand one of its products, 'Ghana Chocolate'.

You see, Ghanaian chocolate has some niche renown for its 70%+ natural cocoa content (most chocolates are full of vegetable fat or artificial substitutes), and this is probably what the Japanese firm had wanted to exploit. A C-level executive of one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies once told me that he favoured only Ghanaian chocolates for the afore-mentioned reason.

And yet, to repeat, Africa has failed to stamp its exoticness on the few bars of chocolates it turns out, leaving the lucrative luxury segment of the $80 billion global industry to the Swiss and Belgians.

Nontwenhle, a graduate of the elite Leatherhead Institute, where she perfected her craft, doesn't like this status quo one bit. And when our Zulu Princess (she is descended from a legendary king no less) doesn't like something, she - like her warrior forebears - does something about it.

Pick-n-Pay has started selling Ezulwini chocolates. That's just the beginning for Nontwenhle, as she scours South Africa and further afield for more distributors and luxury outlets.

A big chocolate business in the townships of South Africa - where the unemployment rate is pegged at 40% by some observers - serving the enlightened tastes of the world's chocolate aficionados will create thousands of jobs, expand access to vocational education for a great many youth, and provide an entree into other fine brand industries for aspiring entrepreneurs of Nontwenhle's ilk.

Simply put it could transform the lives of many in South Africa, and across Africa, by creating a new symbol of hope, pride and achievement.

Ezulwini means Heaven. Nontwenhle does not believe in half-measures or half-symbols either.