fairafric is owned by 360 individuals at the moment. Main shareholders are the founders who decided early on that they want customers, employees and suppliers to be shareholders of the company. The key idea here is to be sustainable not only from a social and environmental perspective but from a financial one as well.

While seeing the interest payments and (future) profits already going to our network (friends, customers, suppliers, long term supporters) and understanding that this alone is already an achievement by itself, we felt that we are leaving out the most vulnerable stake holders we have, our cocoa farmers. Although more than 10 years of amazing work by the cocoa initiative Yayra Glover Ltd. (which is financed by organic premiums) has increased living standards massively, every additional dollar the people at the very beginning of our value chain receive goes a long way.

For that reason we have worked with tax and legal advisers to create a framework in which these farmers can benefit from the chocolate sales of fairafric. Since buying shares is not an option for farmers of course, we have started a foundation in Germany (where fairafric is registered) that holds shares in fairafric on behalf of the farmers. The foundation buys shares in fairafric. Any dividends these shares will ever make will be handed on to the farmers, according to the volumes of beans they have contributed to the chocolate production.

The official start of this project was August 28th 2018. The foundation will keep raising money in order to buy shares for farmers. Donations are of course also very welcome in this context. Having our farmers to co-own fairafric motivates us even more to spread the Made in Africa story and chocolate further.