For generations, the family cocoa farms of Ghana have produced beans of wondrous quality. Ghanaian farmers harvest the ripe cocoa pods by hand, ferment the beans between banana leaves right on the forest floor and then dry the beans in the warm African sun.

To this day, European and American chocolatiers buy cocoa beans from Ghana and export them to their chocolate factories throughout the world where the famed Ghanaian beans are transformed into some of the world’s most delicious and expensive chocolate.

Now, for the first time, The Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company is producing world class chocolate entirely in Ghana using beans The Financial Times calls “the finest cocoa in the world.” Steven C. Wallace founded the company in February, 1991, at the age of 29 convinced that if Ghana could grow the “world’s finest cocoa”, it ought to be able to produce some of the world’s finest chocolate. Wallace’s interest in Ghana began in 1978 when, as a sixteen year-old, AFS high school foreign exchange student, he lived in the town of Sunyani located in the fertile Brong-Ahafo region of the country. His host family was a traditional Ghanaian family consisting of his host father, his three wives and twenty-one children.

Omanhene has proven itself one of the most successful and creative joint ventures between the U.S. and Ghana. We have won accolades from United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, Shirley Temple (former ambassador to Ghana) and President Jimmy Carter. We produce value-added gourmet chocolate tailored specifically to export markets resulting in enhanced foreign exchange revenues for Ghana.

The sale of Omanhene chocolate results in higher revenues and consequently higher wages for both workers at the chocolate factory and for local cocoa farmers. Since cocoa is a commodity crop, farm incomes in Ghana are subject to world cocoa price fluctuations. Ghanaian cocoa farmers have previously been forced to abandon their farms when world cocoa prices stagnate.

Customers love trying the “chocolatiest” milk chocolate in the world. Omanhene dark milk chocolate ingots contain more chocolate liquor — the non-alcoholic essence of the cocoa bean — than any other milk chocolate in the world. The word “Omanhene” (oh-mahn-hee-nee) comes from the Twi language and is the title for the traditional king or chief, the repository of ethical and moral authority in Ghana.

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Our chocolate has been:

• Noted in The New York Times and seen on NBC’s Today Show;
• Featured in Georgia Pellegrini’s book “Food Heroes”, Michael Turback’s book “Hot Chocolate”, David Lebovitz’s “The Great Book of Chocolate”, and in Orla Ryan’s “Chocolate Nations”
• Selected by Chocolatier magazine as one of only three dark chocolates in the world featured in every one of Chocolatier’s Caribbean cruise chocolate tastings;
• Featured on the international radio network, Voice of America which transmits in 46 languages to 92 million listeners per week; and
• Highlighted in The Financial Times (London), The Journal of Commerce, The Amsterdam News, Consumers Digest, and in Reuter’s European Business Report.

For additional information please contact The Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company at 1-800-LUV-CHOC (1-800-588-2462) or 414-744-8780 or at [email protected].

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