The recent mission led by the Cameroonian Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Council in Milan for the Universal Expo held there has started yielding fruits. Indeed, according to CICC’s executive secretary Omer Gatien Malédy, some Italian industrialists are interested in building in Cameroon, solar-powered cocoa-drying ovens.

This project led by Italian industrialists from whose country is the first export destination for Cameroon’s coffee, could be the solution to one of the main challenges Cameroon’s cocoa sector currently faces, knowingly, the smoke smell on beans which lowers the quality of cocoa in some production basins.

Truly, in Cameroon’s coastal and South-Western regions, the harvesting period for cocoa coincides with the beginning of the raining season. Due to this, cocoa producers have to use rudimentary ovens (firewood) to dry their beans thus resulting in the arising of smoke smell on them. In 2013 for example, 2,000 tons of cocoa beans were rejected by European importers because of the strong smoke smell they emitted; this cost operators a loss of about 3 billion FCFA.

Experts say the strong smoke smell arises only in cases where producers use damaged ovens or proceed to artisanal drying (firewood). To overcome this, the National Office for Cocoa and Coffee (ONCC) launched in 2014, a programme to rehabilitate 10,000 ovens in the production basins. However, the solar-powered ovens by the Italian industrials would be more beneficial to improving quality of cocoa, especially in basins where harvest coincides with the raining season.

BRM