End-to-End Traceability for the Cocoa Supply Chain

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1. What do you propose to do? [20 words]

Crowdsource the cocoa supply chain through a social network for journalists, farmers, buyers and the government.

2. Is anyone doing something like this now and how is your project different? [30 words]

There are many NGO’s and industry initiatives supporting sustainable agriculture – this project would complement these efforts through a shared platform for documenting the cocoa supply chain.

3. Describe the real world challenge that you are trying to solve for African media [50 words]

The cocoa trade in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire has important social and environmental problems, but the supply chain is not transparent, so journalists, advocates, and the government are unable to systematically monitor conditions and aid in remediation.

4. How and why will your solution work? [100 words]

By crowdsourcing cocoa traceability information (locations of cocoa farms, cooperatives, trade routes, processing sites and ports) this project will make it possible for journalists, NGO’s and governments to monitor and improve conditions on the ground while enabling sustainable, high-quality cocoa production for international buyers. Our approach uses an open web API to collect information from diverse stakeholders across the supply chain (via SMS; Voice; OCR; Email; Spreadsheet; Web), aggregating the geo-data for a real-time view of the cocoa supply chain.

5. Who is working on it? [100 words]

Sourcemap Inc., a US startup specialized in crowdsourcing supply chain data, together with African media partners and farmer cooperatives, and for the use of local and international governments, NGO’s, and international cocoa buyers. Potential media partners in Ghana include HacksHackers, African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting, African Health Journalists’ Association, African Development Journalists’ Association, Africa Interactive and The Statesman Online. Farmers Cooperatives and cocoa buyers are TBD.

6. What part of the project have you already built? [100 words]

We have built sourcemap.com, a social platform for sharing supply chain data with a dashboard for logistics visualization and optimization. The website has an open API that supports storytelling (video, photo, narrative) tied to logistics information (locations, quantities, shipping routes, etc…). See http://vimeo.com/sourcemap/demo for a demonstration. This project will support field research to co-design the user interfaces, software development  of the API to include data submitted by SMS/Voice/OCR-scanned ledgers (other media TBD), and a field study with at least one journalist organization, a farmer cooperative, a NGO or government group and an international cocoa buyer.

7. How would you sustain the project after the funding expires? [50 words]

End-to-end cocoa traceability will be free for journalists, farmers, cooperatives, and cocoa processors. Multinational cocoa buyers, NGO’s and governments will pay to subscribe to the administrative platform used to crunch the numbers and plan strategy. The pilot study in Ghana will inform future expansion into Côte d’Ivoire.

Requested amount from ANIC: $100,000
Expected amount of time required to complete project: 9 months
Total Project Cost: $150,000

Name: Leonardo Bonanni
Twitter: @sourcemap
Organization: Sourcemap Inc.
Country: USA