Like many in the craft chocolate world, I’ve shied away from African cacao. Ghana and the Cote d’Ivoire produce about 60% of the world’s cacao, but the quality and farming practices are problematic. Most of what’s grown in those countries is the bitter Forastero bean. Chemical-heavy monoculture farming, often using child and slave labor, is typical. Fermentation is done at a scale that’s hard to control for quality. With the exception of the islands of Madagascar and São Tomé(both producing delicious cacao), and the occasional nano-batch from some esoteric source, African origins haven’t made it to our Wall of Bars. Except for bars made from Tanzania’s Kakao Kamili beans.
Tanzania is renowned for incredible national parks, thriving herds of big game, and the iconic Mount Kilimanjaro. But with one of the lowest GDP/capita in the world, Tanzanian farmers are barely at the subsistence level. Although parts of the country have a perfect microclimate for growing cacao, historically the quality was unremarkable due to poor post-harvest practices. 
In 2013, Simran Bindra and Brian LoBue, two Stanford grads, launched Kokoa Kamili in an effort to realize the region’s full potential. Small--sometimes tiny--lots of “wet” Trinitario beans are collected from farms on motorbikes that can maneuver through the mud-filled roads to a central processing facility in Mbingu. There the beans are evaluated and sorted, carefully batch-fermented, uniformly dried and sorted again before being shipped to lucky bean-to-bar producers like Iceland’s OmNom.
Kokoa Kamili selects the highest quality beans, paying farmers a hefty premium over market price. And by bringing the harvest of so many smallholder farmers together, they’ve been able to increase the value even further by securing organic certification. Farmers have been growing cacao organically by default for generations, but certification is a costly and time-consuming process beyond the reach of individual growers. 
The increased revenue helps improve grower communities while encouraging the cultivation of additional trees. More than 200,000 seedlings have been planted as a result. photos: kokoa kamili and omnon
Tanzania is renowned for incredible national parks, thriving herds of big game, and the iconic Mount Kilimanjaro. But with one of the lowest GDP/capita in the world, Tanzanian farmers are barely at the subsistence level. Although parts of the country have a perfect microclimate for growing cacao, historically the quality was unremarkable due to poor post-harvest practices. 
In 2013, Simran Bindra and Brian LoBue, two Stanford grads, launched Kokoa Kamili in an effort to realize the region’s full potential. Small--sometimes tiny--lots of “wet” Trinitario beans are collected from farms on motorbikes that can maneuver through the mud-filled roads to a central processing facility in Mbingu. There the beans are evaluated and sorted, carefully batch-fermented, uniformly dried and sorted again before being shipped to lucky bean-to-bar producers like Iceland’s OmNom.
Kokoa Kamili selects the highest quality beans, paying farmers a hefty premium over market price. And by bringing the harvest of so many smallholder farmers together, they’ve been able to increase the value even further by securing organic certification. Farmers have been growing cacao organically by default for generations, but certification is a costly and time-consuming process beyond the reach of individual growers. 
The increased revenue helps improve grower communities while encouraging the cultivation of additional trees. More than 200,000 seedlings have been planted as a result. photos: kokoa kamili and omnon
kim hack
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