Bulls n Bears Entrepreneurship Zone :: Farming to impact with Cocoa360

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Shadrack Frimpong, the founder and CEO of Cocoa360, is an entrepreneur who
is transforming the way sustainable development is done in Africa by using
revenues from community cocoa farms to facilitate and provide access to
education and health treatments in remote villages where these farms are set
up. In exchange, the beneficiaries work on a community-run cocoa farm.

“People grow cocoa across rural communities in Ghana but cocoa farmers and
their families live on less than 50 cents a day,” says Frimpong. “My parents
have been cocoa farmers for over 45 years and my village only got
electricity in 2005. We thought that was injustice and we reasoned that if
cocoa could generate that much revenue, we could use it as a force for
good.”

Today, Cocoa360 has enrolled 126 students in schools and its community
health centre has treated about 3,000 patients and delivered close to 40
babies.


How it started


Born and raised in Tarkwa Breman, a remote village in the Western Region of
Ghana, Frimpong grew up in abject poverty without access to basic social
amenities like running water and electricity. His father is one of the
roughly 1.6 million cocoa farmers driving Ghana’s US$2bn cocoa economy. Yet,
a vast majority of cocoa farmers are trapped in intergenerational poverty.

Unlike many people in his community who had bright educational prospects
but where held back by economic barriers to education such as tuition fees
and uniform costs, Frimpong was able to break from the mould. With support
from a COCOBOD (the Ghana Cocoa Board) scholarship and street hawking,
Frimpong enrolled at Opoku Ware School, Kumasi. He later won a full
scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania, and became the first person
in his village to attend college in the United States. He returned home with
a degree in Biology, honoured as the Flagbearer, University Scholar and one
of five students (and the first black student) in his graduating class
awarded the prestigious $150,000 Amy Gutmann President’s Engagement Prize
(PEP) for Penn seniors’ civic engagement projects.

Frimpong returned to Tarkwa Breman in 2015 to establish the nonprofit
Cocoa360 with the PEP prize money as seed funding. Cocoa360 runs a community
health clinic and a tuition-free school for girls in eight communities;
pioneering a “farm-for-impact” model which uses proceeds from a community
cocoa plantation to self-sustain the hospital and school.

Because Cocoa360 is a community-based and community-driven initiative, it
works with a village committee who serves as the link between the
organisation and the community to ensure that the programmes are continually
in line with the needs of the community.

“I don’t believe in an organisation trying to do too many things. Cocoa360
has only one goal and a model – which is to use proceeds of cocoa to improve
health and education outcomes. We can’t solve all the problems and that’s
why we are just focused on education and healthcare. Our central mission has
been how best we can put community members and people that are supposed to
benefit from these interventions at the heart of decision making towards
community development,” he says.

With 37 staff members on-board full time, Cocoa360 has offices in Ghana,
London and the United States. While the office in Ghana is mainly for
operations, both the other offices are for fundraising.


How the model works


Cocoa360 goes into cocoa communities to identify the greatest challenge –
whether it is education or healthcare. “If the most pressing challenge is
education, that’s what we will focus on. And in the case where the community
already has a government school, our goal is not to re-invent the wheel but
to strengthen the system that exists,” Frimpong explains.

In the case where the amenities are non-existent, the community provides a
land or a matured cocoa farm which will be cultivated and maintained to
provide the community needs.



“Things like land and farms are not something people just want to give away
– these are things that pass through generations. So for a community to give
you a farm, it means a lot to them,” says Frimpong. “In exchange, we make
sure there is nothing stopping their child from attaining quality education.
This includes taking care of tuition, uniforms, transport, and books. On
their part, the parents provide labour on the farm. After harvesting,
Cocoa360’s farm manager and the village committee meet to give a financial
report to the community. The family members who have worked on the farm and
community members will vote on how the profit will be used to offset
non-salary expenses like uniforms, books, and transportation – which can
prevent people from coming to school.

“The goal is to place lots of decision making in the hands of the community
members. That way, the family and the community will be an active
participant in the decisions that ensures that their child have quality
education. And the reason why we make sure that people participate in the
revenue generation discussions is because in our part of the world, ‘where
your money goes, your heart goes’.”

Unfortunately not everyone has access to the school. “We can’t admit
everybody,” Frimpong explains. “Each term, we admit only 30 students and
this is quite challenging because sometimes, you may have up to 500 pupils
vying for just 30 slots. Nevertheless, our preliminary monitoring and
evaluation report shows clearly that our student attendance rate is at 98%,
compared to the statistics of 60-70 % attendance rate in rural public
schools in the country,” he says.


Surely it couldn’t have been that easy?


In the beginning, Frimpong had the support of some of his university
classmates who are Ghanaians. “Although we are from different social
economic background, these guys decided to join me in the first year to
jumpstart Cocoa360 and that gave me a lot of motivation because I knew I was
not alone.”

“We spent the first year getting to know people in the community – building
bonds and gaining trust,” says Frimpong. “Even though they were my own
people, it was different afterwards (coming back). There was the part where
people had the perception that because I have schooled and lived abroad, I
am different. We also faced the challenge of convincing the community to buy
into the idea. But my mother encouraged me. She said: ‘at least try it for
once, if it doesn’t work out, you will know you did your best. You will
never walk around wondering what if?’.

“One of the early challenges I faced was people telling me I am too young.
When I walked into government offices, they didn’t take me serious because
of my age. Most of the time, I was able to get into certain places just
because I told them I had graduated from an Ivy League school in the US,” he
says.

“There is also the problem of bureaucracy. Registering an organisation in
Ghana can be tough and then there are people who want to take bribes from
you. I went through an educational system that emphasises ethical principles
so there is no way you are going to get me to pay bribe and this prolonged
things for us because I wanted to make sure that ethical principles are the
foundation for us. Going against the grain of how things are done in Ghana
caused us a lot of trouble.”

Another challenge Cocoa360 faced was hiring people to come and work in a
rural community. “In my village, where our headquarters is, you have to
climb a mountain to make a phone call. But so far, God has been good. We
were able to get people who bought into the vision.”

Frimpong is currently studying for his Masters in Nonprofit Leadership to
hone his leadership skills and organisational strategies. He plans to scale
Cocoa360 into other communities this year. “The future is scaling those
lessons we have learnt at Tarkwa Breman to strengthen the healthcare and
educational systems in Ghana,” he says.


What we can learn


Frimpong’s work has merited many awards and recognitions, including the
prestigious Queen’s Young Leader Award and the Samuel Huntington Public
Service Award, which has past recipients such as US surgeon general, Dr
Vivek Murthy. His efforts have been lauded by the United States’ White
House, Ghana’s Flagstaff House, and the Clinton Global Initiative. In 2018,
he was listed among Forbes 30 under 30 young business leaders around the
world.

Frimpong credits Cocoa360’s success to leadership and team work.
“Everything has to do with leadership and it shows how team work and passion
can change things. I think when people see that you have a genuine intention
and you don’t have a ‘me-me’ mentality, then they will do everything to make
things successful.”

“I understand that some people want to start their own business because
they have a fire in their belly, but I think what is not spoken enough is
the question of leadership. If you must start a business, you must have
extreme ownership. You have to own your failure, your leadership, your
humility. You have to understand that the work you do is not about you. And
trust me, when you do that, you will find amazing people to work with. In
the end, no matter how much you pay people –what counts is their dedication
to the mission,” he says.—Howwemadeitinafrica 



Shadrack Frimpong

 

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