It’s no secret that the Empire State’s inimitable energy, relentless pace and pulsating drive have led to the creation of some of America’s (and indeed the world’s) most famous and enduring commercial and cultural institutions.
This dynamism coupled with an effervescent melting pot of people of diverse nationalities and ethnicities has also given rise to a newer trend—an African one. In the past few years, the New York eye on Africa has gone from strength to strength, resulting in what we have today: a veritable community of business leaders—some African, some not—who are using New York as a base for building, showcasing and investing in African ventures and opportunities.
Not long ago, doing business in Africa was the preserve of die-hard Afrophiles in New York. Most New Yorkers had little interest in or connection to Africa; on the contrary they stayed away, discouraged by media depictions of Africa’s various crises. In 2013, this has changed dramatically as the metropolis has become the de-facto hub for much Africa-related activity on this side of the United States (US).
A slew of successful investment firms, PR agencies, fashion companies, media houses and various other businesses now operate out of the city, having laid firm foundations in recent years, all culminating in what appears to be a New York-based Africa boom.
A growing number of people, both African and non-African, are opening and investing in businesses and business-related activities focused on the continent. These people wish to deepen and strengthen the relationship between Africa and the US from their New York City bases. They are positive that they can take
Africa by storm. And, they are doing it. In fact, a New York location allows them to take advantage of the constant comings and goings of international colleagues and clients, who may be easier to access in the US than when further afield, while technology allows them to stay in constant communication with Africa.
You can see the shift by looking at the media’s portrayal of Africa. Major news outlets such as The New York Times and The Daily Beast are now willing to extol Africa’s virtues, while towards the end of last year, The Daily Beast’s editor-in-chief, Tina Brown, hosted an invitation-only breakfast panel to discuss ‘Africa’s burgeoning media sector’.
You also know that change is underway when Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt returns from a trip to Africa and pens a thoughtful blog post, in which he describes Rwanda as a ‘jewel’ and admits his surprise that Nigerians are entrepreneurial, stylish and educated in addition to laying out some of the major opportunities that he has seen for Google’s growth on the continent.
International PR agent Claudine Moore, a British expat who is based in New York and spends a good proportion of her time working on African projects, counts the Nigerian airline Arik Air as one of her clients. She uses her British, American and African connections to advance business on both sides of the world. She is currently gearing up to present the first Social Media Week in Lagos (the first to be held on the continent) in February.
They say that art imitates life, and the city’s art world has not been shy in its current embrace of Africa. Currently showing at the Walther Collection is ‘Distance and Desire’ an exhibition of contemporary African art and photography. The Walther Collection is extraordinary in that it is owned by Artur Walther, a German man who has one of the largest collections of contemporary African art in the world.
Africa Fashion Week, which has become a regular feature of the global fashion week circuit, will return to New York once again this summer.
ARISE media group has also just announced the launch of a new Africa-focused 24-hour global news channel. Guess where its first US-based hub is? New York City of course.
New York finance firms have also been encouraged by President Barack Obama’s open desire to encourage US businesses to invest more heavily in Africa and are looking forward to attending the Africa investor summit later in the year which will once again bring together over 250 investors from around the world at the New York Stock Exchange.   FL
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<h2>The city of dreams</h2>
<h5>By Farai Gundan</h5>
From Wall Street, Tribeca, SoHo, Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens and the rest of the boroughs that make up the 8.2 million-resident metropolitan city, Africans are quietly but steadfastly building their empires and pursuing their diasporan dreams.
Charles Dickens famously wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” and indeed it is the best of times for Africans in the United States. Particularly in New York, a global city, where the residents are constantly in an empire state of mind. This is not surprising given that New York yields tremendous influence in fashion, finance, technology, art, film and media, and music and entertainment. International organization, the United Nations, is headquartered in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan overlooking the East River making the mega-city an epicenter for international diplomacy.
Navigating around New York City on the subways, buses or yellow cabs; Africans in New York typically use HopStop, an app that provides optimal directions and was founded and developed by Nigerian-born tech entrepreneur, Chinedu Echeruo.
Africans can also experience home cooking right in New York. From the renowned Africa Kine, a restaurant that serves West African cuisine in Le Petit Senegal, a neighborhood of Harlem, to the popular Madiba, a South African eatery in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, or Buka’s, an authentic Nigerian restaurant and bar in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
From the electrifying musical performances of D’Banj, Lira and Oliver Mtukudzi during the summer months and the fireside readings of authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and NoViolet Bulawayo to Nollywood movie premieres, colorful traditional weddings, baby showers, graduations and family celebrations, Africans always find a reason to gather in New York. We celebrate our entertainers at the Nigerian Entertainment Awards, our African models walk the runways and fashion designers show off their talent during Mercedes Benz Fashion Week. You find Africans working diligently in corporate America on Wall Street, choreographing hit musicals on Broadway or being cast in the popular play, Lion King.
Like the rest of my fellow Africans who left their beloved countries for greener pastures, I came to the United States fresh out of high school to pursue my tertiary education. I had two options: the United States of America or Japan. The United States offered a generous scholarship to a private liberal arts college in the mid-western state of Wisconsin. I was so determined and focused that I graduated in three years instead of the usual four. I also worked full time to financially support my mother and younger sister who were still in Zimbabwe at the time. Never easy but an “African girl’s gotta do what an African girl’s gotta do”. Fast forward to my graduation, my family stood proudly on the well-manicured lawn at college congratulating me on obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree: a first in my family.
Of course, I had my eyes on even higher goals—a joint law degree and M.B.A. But law school is expensive, so I opted for the M.B.A with the goal of one day returning to get my law degree. That day is still to come. I attended Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, a historically black university, where I learnt about the works of W.E.B DuBois, Langston Hughes, and other great black men and women. Graduate school was a turning point for me. I embraced my culture and realized who I am as an African woman. I even went natural with my hair, sporting a short Afro. It was the beginnings of a coming of age of an African girl.
I received great training in corporate America, however, after a defining moment with Oprah Winfrey, I left to pursue a career in media. From covering red carpets to the fashion runways and everything in between, I have been able to travel across the United States. Yet New York remains the place that can turn an African girl with dreams of being a media mogul into reality.   FL
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newyork-city-with-flags_Audrey-Anderson

I’m an african in new york

It’s been just over a year since I packed up my life in South Africa to return to the country of my birth. As the plane hit the tarmac at the Murtala Mohammed Airport in Lagos, I knew I was back. The humid heat of the city welcomed me home with a slap, as did my struggle through immigration and my search for a cell phone signal so I could find my driver amid the multitude.
In the two hours home on the gridlocked highway, where I luckily managed to grab my dinner from the hawkers, a mild trepidation slowly sank in. This was it; I was home and needed some sort of returnee boot camp.
If you think this is one of those pieces where a Nigerian returnee whines about the ills of the country, think again. Yes, Lagos is traffic-plagued, crowded, highly polluted and will probably have even the bald and patient pulling their hair out as they wait for business meetings, but I love this city. Lagos is a place with rare energy, where each day injects a fierce lucidity that recharges the soul. In this column I want to give you a feel of this buzz, this electricity; a tapestry of arts and soul. I want to lead you through the best nightspots in Africa. From the sweet sounds of highlife music, jazz saxophones and art galleries that tell a tale like no other; to beer parlours with the best pepper soup in the world. From the lavish lives of the high and mighty to the infectious drive of the street vendor.
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On Monday morning in Lagos, the streets swarm with white-collared young, energetic executives, suited up in the heat, tablet in hand, rushing from meeting to meeting. Boardrooms brim with the pulse of change in this land of opportunities.
Patches of mustard-yellow are spattered across the city centre as commercial buses and taxis honk  fiercely at each other, competing for a place on the road with the ‘tut-tut’ BRT buses and private cars, while the market slowly comes to life with stores laying their wares out for a beehive of new customers on the roadside. This day, is not any less important and eventful than the next few.
On Friday evening, men in tailored traditional outfits hunch over bars at the best spots around the city, while half empty bottles of cognac and champagne loll on the table amid boisterous baritone cheers and pulsing Nigerian tunes. This is where the real business deals begin.
Across the road at a posh lounge, ladies with their fancy hairstyles, all with Ankara skirts and designer handbags, cocktail in the right hand, blackberry in the other, plot their next move. The night is still young and promising–for both for the ladies and the bartenders.
A few hours later, as the rich and famous crawl out of the busiest night clubs into the hazy light where their newest Range Rovers sit, there are chewing gum hawkers and parking attendants asking, with their best smiles beaming, “Oga/madame, anything for us?” Have I mentioned opportunities enough in this piece?
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Wedding convoys trail across the city incessantly on a Saturday morning. Lagos is a wedding planner’s Utopia as no weekend goes by in this city without a few nuptials, each one grander than the other. Women are geared up in their towering headties, men in their best kaftans, agbadas and caps, while live bands perform as celebrants and friends are sprayed with cold-hard cash on the dancefloor. From  morning till dusk, it is nothing but a fancy affair. Multimillion-dollar yachts and motorboats tear up and down the creek between the main Lagos islands as the quieter gentlemen come out to play with their toys. They are on their way to private beach-houses on a Sunday afternoon, because they can. Tomorrow is Monday and we have to play before then.
Whichever way you look at it, Lagos is a layered, bitter-sweet dish of rich culture, tastefully infused with a hint of class and laced with plenty of grit for texture.
This is Lagos, my Lagos.

IMG_7759-copy

Working Hard Playing Harder

Master storyteller; revolutionary author; passionate poet. Chinua Achebe was awarded more than 30 honorary degrees and won numerous international prizes, including the 2007 Man Booker International Prize for his achievements in literature. His first novel, Things Fall Apart, was published in 1958, two years before Nigeria gained independence from Britain. The groundbreaking story of village leader Okonkwo and his subsequent downfall was acclaimed for looking at the destructive impact that Western colonial values had on Igbo society. It has sold more than 8 million copies, been translated into more than 40 languages, adapted for the stage and screen and has become required reading for students around the world.
Things Fall Apart was unique. Achebe used it to change the role of African fiction into a tool for social and political analysis and psychological insight. Three days after its publication The Times Literary Supplement wrote that it: “genuinely succeeds in presenting tribal life from the inside”. Through Achebe’s storytelling, and due to him writing in English, which was rare in African literature at that time, the world was introduced to African life as seen through African eyes.
Achebe’s journey towards becoming the father of modern African writing began at a young age. Although his family converted to Christianity, traditional Igbo religion always fascinated Achebe. His interest in Igbo rituals and customs would become a key part of his fictional works, which are filled with depictions of Igbo life and proverbs. At school, Achebe was an avid reader. His love for English literature led him to William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. But the books he read, including Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, often portrayed Africans as uncivilized and in a dehumanizing light, according to Achebe. At first, he agreed with the depictions; however, by 1948, he realized that he had taken on negative Western representations of his own people. He revealed, during a lecture in 1975, that he believed Conrad was a “thorough going racist”.
While studying English, history and theology at the University of Ibadan, where he graduated in 1953, Achebe was compelled to write.
After reading Mister Johnson, the story of a young Nigerian who falls foul of the British colonial regime, by Irish novelist Joyce Cary, Achebe was angered by what he called: “the most superficial picture of not only the country, but even of the Nigerian character”. His desire to become a rebel against Western representations of Africa was sparked. He used his prowess for incisive commentary to tear down European notions of Africa and examine the tensions between African traditions, colonial modernity and Christianity. This, he powerfully demonstrated in four other novels—No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964), A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987)—as well as several poetry anthologies and children’s books, short stories and essays. Achebe can draw the reader in without being overly academic, by using tales about complex individuals as a microcosm for the wider world.
He has used this gift to reflect Africa’s struggles with colonialism to its victorious battles for independence. His criticism has moved from the European colonizers to African leaders and, more recently, to contemporary Western perceptions of Africa.

Farewell The Father Of African Writing

For two months, his eyes, like big saucers, stared at the ceiling, lost somewhere between the living and the dead. The little boy lay listless in his hospital bed in Nairobi, Kenya. A sheet clung to his tiny frame, but it couldn’t hide the scars from the third-degree burns beneath and traces of the violence wreaked on this young life. Into this shattered existence came a ball of paper and string called Chico.
“He couldn’t talk, but Chico raised his arm and talked to him. He clung to Chico’s hand and for the first time in two months, he smiled,” says puppeteer Daniela Hadasy.
Chico is a larger-than-life puppet dog. In the hands of the puppet master, the dog with the cheeky smile has bounced his way into the hearts of sick and injured children in hospital wards across Ethiopia and Kenya.
“The idea is to draw out the emotion from the children so they can deal with their terrible traumas. When it’s a puppet talking to them and not an adult, they feel more free to talk openly. Yes, I’m sitting there and pulling the strings, but it’s the puppet who’s sharing his problems and telling the children how he feels, especially when things are bad. And because he’s telling his story, the children feel safe to tell theirs.”
The art of puppetry is nothing new. History records puppets in ancient Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. In rural Africa, puppets still flourish, but in the cities they are losing out to books and television. “Children everywhere connect with puppets, but in Africa, the puppets immediately become a part of them. It’s the right tool for children there, especially in the slums where most of them have so much anger inside and don’t even have a toy to play with,” says Hadasy, who comes from Tel Aviv, Israel.
Hadasy was seven when she discovered her talent for mimicking voices without moving her lips.
“I used to talk to myself all the time and although I instinctively understood it was normal for children to do this, it scared me that I could use my voice without moving any part of my body. For many years, I kept it
a secret.”
If you look carefully, you can see Hadasy’s stomach moving. Sometimes, there’s a faint quiver on her lips. But most times, she sits perfectly still and lets the puppet create its magic. She holds a conversation with him, alternating between her voice and the one she’s given him. In a typical session, she starts off chatting about everyday things to build the confidence of the child.
“The puppet talks like a child and thinks like a child and so a friendship grows between them. Then, when the child trusts the puppet, we can begin to chat about really traumatic things. I’ve heard everything. Children confess to being raped, abused, to having terrible things done to them. Some of them are so lost and no one has been able to reach inside them.&#8221;
Puppets create a space of safety through which children can express their deepest fears. Follow-up sessions are done with teachers and nursing staff so the therapy is long-term.
“If, for example, medical examinations were done with puppets, it would be so much easier for children. In many of the hospitals, there’s not enough space for the parents to stay over and so children go through scary oncology treatment alone. Especially in the slums in Africa, children have been taught to hold their emotions inside, not to share them. They’re used to keeping quiet. Through the puppets, I help them express themselves, teaching them that if they have a problem, they need to talk about it because only then can someone hear them and
help them.”
Often, Hadasy gives the children small puppets of their own to keep.
“When a child holds a puppet, they feel it’s the puppet who’s doing the talking and so it’s easier for them to open up. They absolutely love their puppets; I’ve seen children take them with them to the toilet. He’s their friend because they really need him.”
She has traveled the world with her entourage of nine puppets, each with a name and a distinct personality. Taking care to create each puppet’s persona, Hadasy spends hours developing the puppet’s voice, giving it a family, making it a part of her and understanding which puppet is right for which children.
“I work in hospitals in Israel where there are a significant number of immigrant children from Ethiopia. One time a little girl asked me why I hadn’t created a black puppet. I felt so ashamed: How could I not have thought of it myself? So I gave birth to Lucia, a popular Ethiopian name in Israel. When I came back to the hospital, the girl was so excited. She said, ‘Oh, she’s like me, she looks like me. I’m so happy—she’s my friend.’”
The beauty of puppetry is that its language is universal and instinctively understood by children everywhere, even the dying child in Nairobi.
“The children in the hospital ward had gathered around his bed where Chico was hugging him, shouting enthusiastically as the puppet clasped the boy’s frail hand in his huge brown paw. We danced with him and we sang with him. I said to the nurse: ‘See that’s the point of puppetry—not just to talk but to dance and to sing and show that life is still beautiful despite the blackness inside.’”

The Comfort Of Puppets

The last time I saw Alf Kumalo, it was a fitting place to meet one of the true greats of journalism. He was working, a camera slung around his neck, as always, on one of the biggest stories on the planet that day. We were at Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, in early 2011, where hundreds of journalists from around the world descended after Nelson Mandela had been admitted in poor health.
Kumalo, the man who had been photographing his friend, Mandela, for more than half a century, was his gentlemanly self. He stopped his car, smiled and shook my hand with a warm greeting. He didn’t quite look himself that day but as he drove off, I mused that the man epitomized everything I respected in journalism: hard work; professionalism; integrity; a sense of fun; guts and grit; in short, qualities of man lauded across Africa, for more than half a century, for capturing the history of the struggles of his continent.
In this trade, riddled by braggarts and self-promoters, where even a spin doctor can command columns in newspapers—Kumalo was a man who wore his eminence lightly. He also wore the finest, smartest, clothes. Now, most photographers wear jeans and scruffy jackets; Kumalo dressed to the letter with a handkerchief nestled in the top pocket of a sharp jacket.
Kumalo appeared in the first edition of FORBES AFRICA in October 2011 when we interviewed him about his role, where he played himself, in the The Bang Bang Club, a film about the rough world of journalists covering South Africa’s political troubles.
“The Bang Bang started in the 1990s, but we’d been banging on for years,” laughed Kumalo.
It had been a long journey for Kumalo from his birth, more than 82 years ago, in Alexandra Township, just down the road from the FORBES AFRICA offices in Sandton. He went to college in Evaton, in the Vaal just outside Johannesburg. His eye for a picture saw him work for a number of publications, including South Africa’s Drum magazine and The Star, photographing every step on the road to freedom for millions of Africans. It was a fascinating journey that would see him befriend boxing giant Muhammad Ali—Kumalo was a successful amateur boxer himself—along with everyone from Moroka, Mbeki and Mandela.
I got to know Kumalo in 2009, when I interviewed him for the CNBC Africa documentary Liliesleaf—The Untold Story. It was a trilogy I produced on the underground movement in the 1960s, which hid out at Liliesleaf farm in Rivonia. Their capture, in a raid on the farm, led to the world-famous Rivonia trial, in which Mandela was sentenced to life.
Kumalo was at the raid and trial. He was lucky enough to have won a car in a photographic competition, so he was able to drive to cover the raid. In the car he packed a blue overall so he could disguise himself as a worker and avoid manhandling by the police. Here, he used his famous techniques to shoot, without anyone knowing, which included balancing a camera on his head and clowning around while the shutter clicked away. This hard work and guile brought Kumalo some of the most stunning pictures of his generation. He told me that he took a picture inside the court at Mandela’s Rivonia trial in Pretoria—an action that would have meant prison back in the day—and hid it away when his editor disapproved.
“I think I still have the negative somewhere, I will have to look it out,” he said to me, but took the secret of the missing Rivonia photograph to his grave.
As a fellow journalist, from the days before cut-and-paste hearsay, I always appreciated how much Kumalo had been an eyewitness to history; that he had felt, as well as recorded, the momentous stories of Africa. I shall never forget the pain in his face when he told me of how he saw police tossing casually the bodies of dead schoolchildren in piles during the Soweto uprising in 1976.
Kumalo suffered for his craft. He was beaten up and arrested more times than he could remember. Once the South African police cracked his skull with a rifle butt and then charged him with fighting police and resisting arrest.  The case dragged on for nine months, before charges were dropped on condition that Kumalo stopped shooting pictures. It was like telling the Limpopo River not to flow.
“I shot pictures all the more; I was angry and defiant,” said Kumalo.
Through it all, Kumalo never lost his sense of fun and love for the job. I recall the twinkle in the eye, when he told of driving to Francistown, in Botswana, to cover the escape of two South African underground activists from Liliesleaf: Arthur Goldreich and Harold Wolpe. The two had broken out of police cells in Johannesburg and fled to Swaziland, hidden in a car boot, before flying to Botswana dressed as priests. Kumalo recalled the hectic night drive, with a journalist, along the dirt road to Francistown where they were more afraid of lions than speed traps. Kumalo risked the lions as he jumped out of the car to retrieve the game road kill for the pot, his colleague was afraid to follow.
“He was in the driver’s seat taking a pee through the door saying, ‘I am not taking the risk, I am not mad like you!’” chuckled Kumalo with a laugh that could light up a room.
It was a more somber occasion, laced with tears, at City Hall in Johannesburg when those who knew Kumalo gathered, on a warm October afternoon, to remember his life. Winnie Mandela was there, as was legendary photographer Peter Magubane, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Kumalo in shooting many of the stories of the day.
“Bra Alf never hurt anyone’s feelings. I never heard him make a derogatory comment about a colleague,” says poet activist, Don Mattera.
Veteran journalist Hopewell Radebe recalled how the gentle man, with a camera, always had time for rookie reporters.
“On a job, he used to call you aside and say, ‘This is how you behave and when things get tough you do this…’ Alf proved the lens of a camera can be as powerful as an AK-47 in freeing the people from the yoke of oppression,” he says.
There were tears from the many young photographers trained by the great man, who lamented how he struggled to raise money for his college in Soweto. Kumalo could have been forgiven for thinking that he was denied the monetary reward of an illustrious career. He complained to me that people often stole the images he had fought hard to capture.
All of the photographers in the room lent their cameras for the photographic equivalent of a 21-gun salute. As the shutters clicked away everyone paused for a moment to contemplate a world of journalism that is much poorer for the loss of Alf Kumalo; the kindly king of the lens.

Farewell, The Kindly King Of The Lens

The South African Ballet was founded in 2001 by former members of the defunct State Theater Ballet, one of these dancers was Dirk Badenhorst. The company opened with a season of Giselle, which was performed at the State Theatre, in Pretoria. After some success, it was invited to perform in Russia, the first South African company to do so.
Badenhorst left the SABT because he wanted to explore and felt stifled.
“We started [the] South African Ballet Theater as an entrepreneurship… These young dancers that we train in South Africa need to be brought up with the idea that ‘I can create my own company. I can create my own work. I can create my own opportunities,” he says.
<div id="attachment_1168" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1168" class="size-medium wp-image-1168" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_0160-300x154.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="154" />Giselle &#8211; First Act</div>
In 2008, he cofounded Mzansi Productions—a classically based contemporary dance company—with Esther Nasser. That same year, he began the International Ballet Competition Gala, taking place every second year and bringing together dancers from across the world.
The SABT and Mzansi Production merged this year to form The South African Mzansi Ballet, (SAMB), of which Badenhorst is CEO. The new company will still perform the classics but will expand its offering to create a wider appeal. It’s a question of evolving to be more contemporary and relevant to an African audience.
Although Badenhorst enjoyed a dance career both in South Africa and abroad, he confesses to never being a fantastic ballet dancer, but has a passion for the art.
To most, ballet is an escape to worlds and times imagined. Not just for the audience but for the dancers themselves. Giselle is a great example. The first act is fun, flirtatious, colorful and light but then the second act transports you to a somber, whimsical, yet still romantic place as Myrtha—the Queen of the Wilis—dances onto the stage. You become transfixed not only by the story but by the amazing ways the dancers’ bodies move, their ability to be strong and graceful at the same time. It’s a beauty like no other.
A ballet patron and former first lady of South Africa, Zanele Mbeki, says it makes her feel as if her soul leaves her body and joins the dancers on stage.
“Ballet is inspirational and aspirational,” says Badenhorst.
The SAMB brought in Michaela DePrince to make her professional debut in its production of Le Corsaire, at the Jo’burg Theater in July. DePrince, from Sierra Leone, was adopted from a refugee camp after her orphanage was bombed. Her father was killed by rebels and her mother died of starvation. Despite this, she held onto the dream of being a ballerina, after seeing one on the cover of a magazine outside the orphanage; she carried the picture to her new home in the States. Once labeled a “devil child” by the care givers at the orphanage, DePrince is now a wonder child.
<div id="attachment_1167" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1167" class="size-medium wp-image-1167" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/IMG_3554-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />SABT/Air Products Development School, Alexander</div>
One of the reasons a merger between the SABT and Mzansi Productions made sense, was because it meant pooling the limited funds. The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund has been a great supporter of ballet in South Africa. The fund gives to non-profit organizations and is legally required to spend 95% of its money on three sectors—including arts, culture and national heritage.
There seems to be competition between classical and contemporary dance and Badenhorst thinks there shouldn’t be, since the audiences are so different. The competition lies in the fact that both disciplines go after the same pot of money.
“When you are fighting for survival, then people find it hard to share,” he says.
Badenhorst feels that the problem of funding hampers the growth of the industry. The South African ballet companies, according to him, are not on par with the rest of the world on a national level. Despite this he thinks that South African dancers have more passion and hunger.
“When a dancer in South Africa gets to a certain level, in South Africa, we lose them to overseas companies because we can’t pay them what they can. We don’t have the stability in South Africa that they have.”
Badenhorst agrees that there is less support from the South African government compared to international companies and their governments. It seems that the new South African government still hasn’t moved away from the notion that this is an art for whites which was generously supported by the apartheid government. In 1994, South Africa’s central government issued a notice ceasing all funding to performing companies. At the time of going to press the South African government had not responded to questions from FORBES AFRICA.
It was once written that South Africans criticized ballet for being “a cost-intensive, Eurocentric art form that has no place in an African country”.
Badenhorst notes that while the elitism of the art in the past was racial, it’s now about talent. He compares it to an Olympic sport.
Despite this racial criticism, companies and schools have created programs targeting disadvantaged children in poor areas. The SAMB has about 500 young ballet dancers enrolled in its program. The Cape Town City Ballet’s (CTCB) Outreach, Audience &amp; Development Training program has reached 310,000 people in the last 15 years.
“When you go to the township and work with the young kids and you see what it does on their ability of experiencing themselves, on understanding their bodies… on their imagination development, then I also understand why I’m doing what I’m doing,” Badenhorst reflects.
Ballet in South African townships can be traced back to the work done by the late David Poole in the 1980s, in Cape Town. Poole was a former ballet master and artistic director of the CTCB, after an international dancing career. Former principal dancer, Philip Boyd carried on this legacy with ballet classes in Gugulethu, Cape Town—back in 1991. Boyd’s Dance for All has been around for more than 20 years and now offers training in diverse dance styles in 2 more townships.
A British charity began giving ballet lessons to children in the slums of Nairobi, to keep them off the streets.
In Africa, children are most likely to be pushed into careers that are thought to pay more or carry more prestige—like being a doctor, lawyer or footballer—rather than ballet.
Ballet requires a lot of commitment and focus in order to excel. Andile Ndlovu is a South African ballet dancer who’s been dancing since the age of 10 and is in his third season with The Washington Ballet. It’s hours of work from an early age and Badenhorst believes that aspiring professional dancers need to be ready to enter a company at the age of 16.
It’s not cheap either. The running cost of a performing company, a year, is around $1.4 million. This money can be gathered through ticket sales, private business and the government—if its lucky.
The SAMB has 60 permanent staff members, including dancers, and employs almost as many temporary staff in season. This art form from the old age European aristocrats may have made its way to the “African bush” but it fails to enjoy the same popularity—leading to companies facing financial strain.
Only a few years ago, the SABT sent out an appeal for funding. Badenhorst, who was not with the company at the time, says that the companies need to be more frugal, cut down on staff and change their models to fit the environment. By 2010, the company had raised $793,000, a sure sign that ballet in Africa is not dead.
For years, Badenhorst has formed a mutually beneficial relationship with the National Ballet of Cuba. The international company is performing abstracts from its best work in South Africa and has included South African dancers, like Kitty Phetla, in the show.
Phetla became the first black ballerina to perform in Russia in her role as The Dying Swan.
Badenhorst’s parting words: “We have to go back and we have to not see it [ballet] as an expense, but as an investment”.

Pirouettes Under The African Sky

The lights are off and the curtains drawn. The Africa Corner Bar in downtown Tel Aviv is a shadow of the popular night spot it once was. It jumps more in fear these days, than it ever did to the beat. It is also out of time with name of the neighborhood it is in—the Quarter of Hope.
That name fitted like a glove when Amine Tekele Zegeta opened the bar last year. The Eritrean refugee believed he’d given birth to a place that would make worthwhile the anguish of his difficult journey to Israel.
Eight months on, Tekele Zegeta sits largely by himself in his bar. It’s Thursday afternoon and the place has only three patrons, one of whom has his eyes glued to the small TV set broadcasting an Eritrean music channel that seems to be playing the same three songs in Tigrigna over and over.
The bar has been this empty since May 23, the day a protest against the influx of African migrants spun out of control. The people of the Quarter of Hope ran amok, smashing African-owned stores and terrorizing Africans. Israeli parliamentarians called African migrants infiltrators who should be cut out like cancer.
That night a rock shattered the main window in Tekele Zegeta’s bar. Looters surged in and stole his stock. Out on the street, the rioters chanted racist slogans as they blocked a car driven by a man from the Ivory Coast and smashed his windows, before attacking any Africans they could find. The string of racist demonstrations and inflammatory language worry many, especially Israel’s 120,000-strong Ethiopian community.
“Ever since that day, I don’t feel normal. I am afraid to come to work. I open at irregular hours. I don’t know what will happen next,” Tekele Zegeta says.
It wasn’t the first time Tekele Zegeta’s bar had been hit. Several months after he opened, Israeli youth attacked him outside the bar and beat him up. A few weeks later he was harassed on the street, but managed to escape. Just two days after FORBES AFRICA interviewed him; Tekele Zegeta’s bar was again attacked when a man on a motorcycle roared up to the front door and threw in firecrackers.
“People don’t want to come here. They know there is trouble. They are lying low and not going outside too much, they don’t want to be attacked,” he reflects sadly.
Since 2005, some 60,000 Africans, mostly from Sudan and Eritrea, made their way to Israel, mostly seeking refuge from war, persecution and dictatorship. Like Tekele Zegeta, they cross into Israel via its porous border with Egypt and many tell tales of vicious torture and rape at the hands of their Sinai Bedouin handlers. Once in Israel, they are picked up by the army, given basic medical treatment and taken to a prison to be processed. They are set free after 10-12 days on conditional release, a status they must renew every three months. Then they are left to fend for themselves.
Israel considers the migrants interlopers, but the country has a policy of not deporting them, especially the Sudanese and Eritreans who are given group protection because they could face persecution—or worse—if they are sent back. Because they’re not recognized as refugees, most of them are not given the rights that go with being a refugee, such as the right to housing, work and medical care. Many end up sleeping in public parks and roaming the streets by day, with no hope of making a living.
Tekele Zegeta has it tough, but he is one of the lucky ones. He is recognized as a refugee and has a work visa. He left Eritrea in 2007, leaving behind his parents and a young daughter, for a journey that took him about a month. After years of cleaning apartments and offices, he pooled his savings and borrowed from friends to open the bar. He serves coffee, tea, soft drinks and beer in Israeli and European brands as well as Asmara, a brand named after the Eritrean capital. The bar is modest; it has eight tables with plastic coverings and the walls are adorned with posters of Eritrea or Ethiopia.
“I wanted to have a place for African patrons. They can come here, drink something, talk. But I don’t know if I will stay open. How can I?” he asks.
“I wouldn’t say this is my dream but I can’t stay cleaning houses for the rest of my life. I wanted to do something to get ahead. In Eritrea, I was ok. I had a home, an income, a life. I came here as a refugee, I came here for help.”
Tekele Zegeta is highly critical of the Israeli government’s handling of the situation.
“It is clear that Israel doesn’t want us here. I have been here five years and what do I have to show for it? In other countries, after that many years, you get some sort of permanence, citizenship, a chance at a normal life. Israel keeps us in limbo. It accuses us of seeking work but is working a crime in any other country? Israel should abide by the law. It can either send us to a third country or help us.”
In a high profile campaign, Israeli authorities began a crackdown on Africans in June, arresting and deporting mainly South Sudanese nationals. Israel maintains that since South Sudan is now an independent state, with ties to Israel, no-one sent back would face danger.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu also lauds his government’s plans to finish the construction of a fence along the Israeli border with Egypt and a detention center that will house some 10,000 people, in the Negev desert. The government is not saying what it will do with the thousands of people who reside in the country but have no rights.
Ethiopian MK Shlomo Molla is on record as saying: “We feel very uncomfortable about what is happening&#8230; Jews talk about how we were slaves in Egypt and how we suffered because of our religion and culture outside of Israel—but now we are making others suffer.”
Back at the Africa Corner Bar, Tekele Zegeta is cynical.
“What did the government do after the demonstrations? Nothing! It cannot go on like this. Israel can’t just throw people to the dogs. It must care what happens to us. If I close, I will be left with nothing, and I will owe money. I would be back at square one.”
Tekele Zegeta may have to shut Africa Corner Bar’s doors, no longer feeling safe in the area and in Israel in general. But he knows he cannot go back to Eritrea and is now seeking asylum in a third country. “At least, if I can be accepted in another country, that would be better,” he concludes.
For Tekele Zegeta, this place of refuge has become a place to seek refuge from. It is a sign of the times in Tel Aviv that an African as battered as he is can be considered lucky.

No Quarter Or Hope

In this age of trust funds, favored sons, fat corporate bonuses and bling, how refreshing it is to read of an entrepreneur who has fought his way up from the very bottom of the barrel with courage and humility.
This is the story of Herman Mashaba—who was the April FORBES AFRICA cover story—told in a colorful but straightforward way. A man who struggled to raise 25 cents every year for his school fees, who went on to make millions. It charts his fairytale rise from a person growing up in the middle of nowhere, who made his fortune with a hair-care product, Black Like Me, on his way to the black business ball. You could argue that Cinderella had it far easier.
The overall impression you are left with is that life was grim at the bottom of the heap in apartheid South Africa. Mashaba grew up in Hammanskraal near Pretoria, without electric lights or running water. These were dark days of little food, bullying teachers and draconian laws enforced by ruthless policemen. When Mashaba talks of his fear of walking past a police roadblock, you almost feel as though you are walking with him.
In telling his tale, Mashaba appears to resist the temptation to airbrush his past, as is the wont of a lot of people who have made it. He admits he took and sold drugs and says he was no angel when it came to women.
This is a story of survival and Mashaba leaves us in no doubt that he did what he had to in order to keep going: whether it be running illegal dice games, where there were stabbings every now and again, or selling stolen welding equipment to the township gangster.
As a professional storyteller, I can commend Mashaba for his straight telling of the tale. There are no frills here, or flights into fancy; it is told with an almost business-like, dead narrative that lends power to the richness of the story. He talks of his roots with warmth, but without sickly sentiment; Mashaba speaks of the injustices he faced growing up under apartheid with a quiet anger. In particular, he writes bleakly about his determined mother, Mapula, who was a poorly paid domestic worker—she virtually had to escape from the house of her employers so she could make the long journey to spend time with her children. There are also aching words over the loss of his elder brother, Pobane, who died in a car accident, and the loss of his first child after just 16 hours of life.
Mashaba also pays generous tribute to his wife of nearly 30 years, Connie, who has stuck by him on the often fraught journey from township to luxury townhouse.
In short, Mashaba took his chan-ces, refused to give in and enjoyed a lot of what he says all entrepreneurs need to make it—good luck.
This modest little book could almost be a textbook for the young and hopeful in this, the entrepreneur-themed issue of FORBES AFRICA.

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A Grim Fairytale

How would Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet have met during the internet era? Would it have been in person, as their eyes met across the dance floor at the Capulet Ball, after he confirmed her location via a foursquare update? Or would he have sent a virtual wink to her BBM, the pin of which he coaxed from a mutual Facebook friend?
In 16th-century Verona, the star-crossed lovers were blamed for being reckless; in the 21st century, their only danger would be the accusation of being anti-social in public, as their thumbs did the talking. Countless hours would be spent sending each other their most flattering, photoshopped images, taken on the beach or a Friday night. These would be complemented with blushing and pouting emoticons and beating hearts.
Juliet’s Facebook status updates would reflect an acute case of infatuation. She would post a YouTube video of Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’ on her wall. Her friends would comment: “So, who’s the lucky guy? &lt;3” Her nurse—these days, her life coach—would share a photograph, using instagram, of a sports brand billboard encouraging her to: “Just do it!”
Romeo’s workout video to LMFAO’s ‘Sexy And I Know It’ would be posted on YouTube, in an attempt to impress his new love. It would go viral within a few days. He would have to be fit for the secret balcony rendezvous: he would have to jump her wall and give the security guards the slip.
Meanwhile, lying on her bed, Juliet would use her notebook to dote on her lover’s talents in his flickr albums. While browsing through his professional expertise on LinkedIn, she would receive a BBM text saying, ‘Meet me on your balcony in 10.’ He would be heartbroken about being unable to tag himself “—with Juliet ‘Jules’ Capulet” in his Facebook status. To keep it secret, Romeo would open another Facebook account, with a red Ferrari as his profile picture, under the alias, Italian Stallion. He would use this new profile to stalk her wall and compare himself to photographs of her previous boyfriends.
Tybalt, Juliet’s protective cousin, infuriated with Romeo for sneaking into the Capulet Ball, would challenge him to a duel through Google chat. Romeo would decline, and Mercutio—his right-hand man—would accept the challenge on behalf of the Montagues. It would end in Mercutio’s death. In his final moments, while clutching at his chest, Mercutio would tweet @RoMeo, @JCapulet13 ‘A plague upon both your houses #caughtinthecrossfire.’ He might be re-tweeted by someone caught in the I’m-doing-this-because-everyone-else-is-doing-it sharing trend. Romeo would avenge Mercutio’s death by killing Tybalt. #TybaltRIP. Please retweet!
Lord Capulet would discover the love affair through the iCloud application, which would indicate that Juliet was at the Montague estate. Upon her return, a row would ensue. In a tantrum she would leave to meet Friar Laurence, the spiritual healer slash yoga instructor. He would Google search the name of the best sedative to help her feign death in an attempt to escape a proposed marriage with Paris. He would shun the messenger—who in the original story fails to deliver the message, resulting in Romeo’s suicide—in favor of multiple social media alternatives, in case Romeo’s cellphone were to go through to voicemail.
The friar would spare Paris’ life. While mourning at the Capulet burial crypt, the friar would divert Paris’ attention from Romeo’s presence with his new tablet. “What can’t you do with it?” Paris would ask, as Romeo slipped past to prevent confrontation. While Shakespeare would still be credited for penning the world’s greatest love story ever told, with the help of social media the story would end differently. The lovers’ tragic double suicide would be avoided, hence Shakespeare would have saved the lives of three young people. It would no longer be “a story of more woe” as the happy couple would elope after booking a room in Las Vegas via booking.com. They would, however, have to remember not to ‘Facebook check in’ their location.

How Much do average apps make?

@Juliet: Did My <3 Love Til Now?

With all this talk about free trade, globalization and e-commerce, I wonder how anyone could not associate a sophisticated habit like wine sipping with Nigerian society.
Of course, as more countries produce and consume the astringent stuff, the product-to-market cycle has become a matter of global interest. Nigeria’s fast-growing wine industry is proof of its exposure to this global economy.
“Nigeria is a major wine destination,” says Obinna Otuonye, founder and chief executive of Just Wines, a Lagos-based wine retailer. He should know. Otuonye has spent the last 14 years sourcing and selling wines.
“I started small; I started with one bottle of wine in a bag, strolling around the streets of Lagos in search of customers. I gradually grew my business. Initially, my European friends were curiously surprised, they were very skeptical about my intentions. One German winemaker once asked me whether black people drank wine&#8230; now he knows better—he is currently one of my biggest suppliers.”
Viticulture is largely unknown in Nigeria. I may be ignorant on this but there are no wineries in West Africa. Wine drinking is however happening big time in Africa’s largest population patch. Vintage and non-vintage wines from the traditional and nouveau vineyards of the world are selling like never before in Lagos and, for this reason, Nigeria could very well be described as the China of Africa (except for the fact that China also produces some of its own wine).
“The economy is tough my brother but our people are drinking more… I sold more drinks, and more wines this Christmas than any other time over the last five years,” another Lagos-based retailer told FORBES AFRICA the week after the festivities; the period of the year when beer drinking peaks in these parts. In truth you only have to go to the shops and markets across Nigeria’s major cities to see the invasion of the red and pink bottles.
Foreign liquor, especially wine and champagne, is giving beer makers a good fight for a share of throats in the market.
“Nigeria could very well qualify to be Africa’s thirstiest economy,” analysts at BGL Group, an investment bank say. “When compared alongside other key markets in Africa and Europe, Nigeria’s per capita liquor consumption is relatively low and recent activity in the sector—business consolidations and new investments—mean more hectolitres of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages for the country’s burgeoning population.”
Beyond beer production and consumption, Nigerians are increasingly quaffing red, white and pink varieties of wine.
“To get a good feel of how and what Nigerians like to drink you have to understand our urban, contemporary way of life, and the numerous lifestyle influences and choices we have to contend with,” says Kayode Oguntayo, businessman, wine connoisseur and wine bar owner. His wine cafe, 1662, is one of many cozy joints springing up in cities like Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Benin and Port Harcourt. It is a ritzy, well-appointed bar complete with barbecue-grill, wall-mounted flat TV screen and cappuccino mixer. Located in the highbrow Ikoyi area of Lagos, it is a quaint and inconspicuous place, a shy contrast to the army of flashy fast food eateries, restaurants and nightclubs around.
“Why 1662?” FORBES AFRICA asked innocently.
“1662 is a significant year in the history of wine making. It was the year an English scientist called Christopher Merret (1614-1695) first documented the modern method of making wine,” Oguntayo replies. Interesting! Do any of his patrons know this?
“My customers are well-educated, accomplished business people and aspirational working class professionals. They want exclusivity and they like to enjoy their wine in a certain kind of milieu, away from the hustle—my role here is to provide my clientele with good quality. I have regular wines, but I prefer to stock vintage, full-bodied wines with character and balance.”
Conspicuous wine consumption al fresco is not an image you easily associate with Nigeria. But social culture is dynamic. Some of the world’s priciest wines would be found in the shops, cafes and private collections in Nigeria. A few hugely expensive labels in Messrs Otuonye and Oguntayo’s establishments can be found—Roederer Cristal, a champagne; Domaine de la Romanée Conti or Château Lafite Rothschild, Bordeaux’s most famous label; Château l’Évangile, Château Pétrus, Château Ausone,  and Château Cheval Blanc. Nigerians have good taste, Otuonye says.
“The more expensive wines move faster than the cheaper ones.”
Wine merchants say three out of every five bottles of wine sold in Nigeria is red. By far the most common variants here are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Shiraz—popular pairings with the country’s spicy, meaty meals.
One could be forgiven for believing that South Africans out-wined the rest of the continent.
“There is no type of champagne that you will not find in Nigeria,” Otuonye says. “New drinks continue to arrive every week mainly because there is growing demand for the best wines from the wine growing regions of the world.”
“Credibility and word of mouth marketing is important in this kind of business and we do what we need to do, which is basically to stock the best wines from the vineyards of Europe and other key wine regions.”
Oguntayo explains quite tactfully, that a wine drinking habit indicates a certain level of social and economic refinement—hinting that wine may not be for riff-raff.
In this economy, where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is huge, having a regular glass of wine for leisure whilst lounging around with the lads or with a meal is a distant dream for many. Some of these wines cost as much as $80 a bottle. And that’s cheap, by global standards. Really cheap wines would retail for about $8 to $16 a bottle. By comparison, $10 would buy you about 12 bottles of beer or a 24-bottle crate of soft drinks.
Despite these choice-cost comparisons, the purported health benefits and appeal of wine makes its consumption a growing social phenomenon.
“You must realise that regardless of their pocket-power, most Nigerians are aspirational social animals,” says Dele Martins, a Lagos-based business executive.
Like most other wine-friendly parts of the world, the dynamic of the Nigerian wine scene combines both the esoteric and the obvious, especially with brand names like 1662 and Just Wines. Driving this dynamic forward is the potent mix of opportunity, passion and the pursuit of profit. After all the wine business is a global game: free trade, but no free drinks.

A Corky Little Upstart

My seven-year old nephew recently asked me a sticky question: “Uncle Musky, where do chocolates come from?”
“Chocolates?” I quipped, scanning my mental box for a passable answer. “Yes, chocolates,” he repeated, licking choc-soiled fingers. “Where do they come from?”
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Chocolates come from the cocoa tree, I said, wondering if he would buy the truth. “Cocoa tree?” he bellowed. “Where do cocoa trees grow, do we have cocoa trees in Nigeria?” I rolled my eyes: “How can we not have cocoa trees?!” Time for a quick geography lesson, I muttered to myself. We spent the next 10 minutes discussing the origins and uses of cocoa; cultivated in the tropics, its produce consumed in a variety of forms globally.
When my informed ignorance of the bitter-sweet bean began to wane, I grabbed an encyclopaedia (thank goodness for a good, old fashioned home library; and by the way, how many people still read hardcover tomes these days?) and, together, we searched for ‘chocolate’ which referenced the word ‘cocoa’ or ‘cacao tree’, the last term being a tree that produces an ovoid-shaped pod (fruit) containing cacao seeds or beans; the trees growing naturally in the South American jungle, thousands of years ago, well before processed cacao products began to go mainstream slightly over 100 years ago. Its scientific name: theobroma cacao, the Latin word ‘theobroma’ literally meaning “food of the gods” in English and ‘cacao’ being an Aztec word.
We read that it was the Spanish conquistadors (where didn’t they go?) that introduced cacao to the rest of the world (and I was thinking aloud, “but how can that be? Is it possible that they sold cacao beans to their trading partners in Africa, who then began to cultivate them?”). By now, my positively pesky one was staring suspiciously at my ugly face.
His mind was gyrating. “Aztec, Spanish sailors, America, Asia, Africa, where is Africa, is Africa in Nigeria?”, “Latin&#8230;What is Latin?”, “Food of the gods, who are gods?”, “Does God eat chocolates too?” I could see a litany of questions welling up in his eyes, so, smart lazy adult that I was, I swerved the conversation into a cul-de-sac.
Here was I, face-to-face with honest ignorance, confronting the classic heuristic dilemma of urban kids growing up in today’s Nigeria—let’s call them ‘Generation Y+’.
Born and bred in the early years of the 21st century, they will never grasp the agronomical world of their forbearers. Try telling the Y+ clan that rice (especially the American long grain type) was, not too long ago, an uncommon, foreign delicacy. Try informing them that the chocolates they now consume in various forms was once so rare, and so expensive only the elite and wannabe bourgeoisie could be seen enjoying them. These days, we all gobble up chocolate bars, chocolate sweets, chocolate-coated biscuits, a pantheon of chocolate cakes, and chocolate-flavoured cereals almost recklessly. Nigeria now has a confusing assortment of chocolate beverages, chocolate-flavoured yoghurts, chocolate-choked confectionaries and chocolate ice-creams to choose from.
The hot, humid climate also helps. Try drinking cold chocolate in steamy 35oC weather—or a warm cup on a cold, wet morning. I have not seen one person who has said anything bad about chocolates, except that too much of it may ruin your digestive borders, if you get my drift. A chocolate drink is a breakfast staple in most Nigerian homes, and for many, especially young, folks, saying “I want to drink tea” actually means “can I have a chocolate drink?”
So, now let us talk about Nigeria’s choc-revolution. The global obsession for ‘nice and sweet’ edibles has crept into Nigerian society like the subtle haze of a misty morning. Our choc-trajectory has been a long and trickling, subliminal evolution of our culinary culture. This was a land once famous for its cocoa plantations. The story of theobroma cacao in Naija (as most Nigerian youths call their country) chronicles the gastro-agrarian history of Chinua Achebe’s homeland. Once a grand and scenic symbol of Nigeria’s agricultural fecundity, the “Groundnut Pyramids” of northern Nigeria were the envy of the world, the nutty equivalents of the pyramids of Mount Sinai in Egypt, supplying the world with its stock of peanuts and vegetable oils (as recorded in Nigeria’s N200 bill).
Today, the peanut pyramids have been levelled, replaced by a plethora of urban jungles and conurbations; and the forests of the future continue to disappear as peanut fields, maize, cashew, oil palm and cocoa plantations struggle for space and economic relevance with religious institutions and property developers. This was how Nigeria lost its once prominent position in the global comity of cocoa growers, and thanks to ‘new age, modern’ realities (meaning global trade, cyberspace and the Anglo-Saxon influence), Nigerians now consume more cocoa and cocoa-based products than they produce. “My fridge is a haven of chocolate bars…especially white chocolate, I love them,” Ms. Uduak Johnson, a Lagos-based retailer told FORBES AFRICA.
With close to six million farmers producing an estimated three million tons of cocoa annually, about 50 million people worldwide depend on the crop for their livelihood, according to the World Cocoa Foundation. A glut of family-owned farms in Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana produce 70% of this global output.
A significant share of these West African produce ends up in Africa’s largest population patch, as Nigerian and foreign companies in the food and beverages, pharmaceutical, personal care sectors buy up raw and semi-processed bean stock from farmers and trading companies, and the rest, as they say, is yum yum…chocolate bars, cakes, biscuits, toffees, and cocoa-based beverages.
So, the question, “where do chocolates come from?” deserves another answer. Chocolates do not come from cocoa trees. “They come from choc-factories in Austria, Belgium, France, Holland, Germany, the United Kingdom, America, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Turkey, Switzerland, Ghana, even China and all those other places that Nigerians like to buy their sweets from,” says Mr Alan Akinkunle-Baker, a Nigerian-born, UK-based management consultant. “Our chocolate habit is really an imported culture.”
I disagree. Cacao consumption was a universal routine in previous millennia, well before ‘globalization’ arrived. The Spanish and South Americans must agree to share the credit for introducing cocoa to the rest of the world with their West African cousins. We need a Pan-African conference on the origins of theobroma cacao.

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