How the UK built a £2.5 trillion economy without growing much of anything, and why Africa is still being paid in peanuts

Africa Grows It. Britain Bills It.

*Africa Brew Brief | Africa One Media | An investigation by Wilbert Frank Chaniwa*

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### I. The smell of Bournville

The first thing you notice at Bournville is the smell. Before you see the factory, the canal or the purple-painted railings, the air already tastes of warm milk and sugar. It is the scent of one of Britain's most beloved brands. Standing at the gates of the Cadbury factory in Birmingham, I kept asking one question: where is the cocoa from, and who got paid for it?

Not one cocoa tree grows within four thousand miles of this building. Yet this is where the money is made.

The history is a proud British story. John Cadbury, a Quaker merchant, founded the company in 1824 and began roasting and grinding cacao beans in 1831. The company moved to a rural site south of Birmingham in 1879 and named it Bournville. The first Dairy Milk bar was made there in 1905.

The modern chapter is less sentimental. In 2010 the American food giant Kraft (now Mondelēz International) bought Cadbury for £11.5bn. It was a hostile takeover, fought by workers, trade unions, the media and even the British government. Mondelēz then closed a factory near Bristol at a cost of 400 jobs, despite Kraft's pledge to keep it open. In 2015 the company was found to have lawfully avoided tens of millions of pounds in tax since the takeover.

So follow the chain. A Ghanaian or Ivorian farmer grows the bean. An American multinational owns the brand. A British factory adds the milk, sugar, machinery and marketing. A British supermarket sells the bar. Which link in that chain earns the least?

You already know the answer.

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### II. The peanuts: what Africa actually earns

Begin with the raw facts of global chocolate. About 70 percent of the world's cocoa beans come from West Africa, and 60 percent from just two countries, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. The whole global confectionery pyramid rests on smallholder farms in two African states.

What do those farmers receive? Studies put the farmer's share of a chocolate bar's final retail value at around 5 to 6 percent. The average cocoa farmer earns about $1 a day in Ghana and about $0.78 a day in Côte d'Ivoire.

The most detailed value-chain study, by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, found that brands and retailers capture an average of 70 percent of total value and 90 percent of total margins. Everyone in the producing countries combined, from cultivation up to export, captures only 18.6 percent of the value and under 7.5 percent of the margin.

It was not always like this. In the 1970s, when cocoa prices were high, cocoa made up as much as 50 percent of a chocolate bar's value. In one generation, Africa's share collapsed from half the bar to a sliver of the wrapper.

At a national scale, the picture is starker still. Of a global chocolate industry worth about $100 billion, Ghana receives roughly $2 billion.

Africa does process some of its cocoa. Africa accounts for about 23 percent of global cocoa grindings, while Europe holds the largest share at about 36 percent. Africa grows about seven in every ten beans but grinds only about two in ten. It makes almost none of the branded chocolate that carries the profit.

> **The first controversial question:** If Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire together control the majority of the world's cocoa, why do they behave like price-takers rather than an OPEC of chocolate? Who benefits from their failure to coordinate?

The idea is not fantasy. Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire would need to partner with only three more producers (Indonesia, Nigeria and Cameroon) to gain enough market share to control cocoa prices outright. The leverage exists. The political will has not.

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### III. What actually drives the UK economy

Here is the uncomfortable truth for anyone who still pictures Britain as an industrial workshop. The UK barely makes things any more. It manages, finances, insures, brands, rents, retails and curates them.

Services make up about 79 percent of UK GDP. Industry accounts for about 21 percent, of which manufacturing is about 10 percent and construction 6 percent. Agriculture contributes only about 1 percent.

These are the five pillars, plus a sixth that matters greatly to Africa.

**1. Government, education and health: about 19% of GDP.** This is the largest single segment within services. The NHS, universities and the civil service form the economy's ballast. British universities also earn substantial income from international students, many of them from Africa.

**2. Real estate: about 12%.** Much of this is the value of owning land and buildings, not of producing goods. Britain earns a large share of its national output simply by owning property.

**3. Professional, scientific, technical and admin services: about 12%.** This covers consulting, law, accountancy and support services. Related professional services employ almost 1.4 million people, including 522,000 in management consultancy, 496,000 in accountancy and 368,000 in legal services. This is the industry that writes the contracts, audits the accounts and advises the governments, including African ones.

**4. Wholesale and retail trade: about 11%.** This is the shelf where the Dairy Milk bar is sold. It is also where much of that 70 percent value share is captured.

**5. Financial services: the crown jewel.** Narrowly defined, finance and insurance make up about 8 percent of GDP. Including related professional services, the industry produced over 11 percent of UK economic output in 2025, or £290bn. That is roughly £10,000 for every household in the country. Financial services alone produced a £92.6bn trade surplus, the largest of any UK sector. The sector's productivity is 2.6 times the whole-economy average.

Pause on that. Britain's single largest trade surplus does not come from a crop, a mineral or a machine. It comes from managing other people's money.

**Plus tourism: selling the past.** Tourism's total contribution to the UK economy reached £147 billion in 2024, about 5 percent of GDP. It supports about 2.4 million jobs, nearly one in fifteen, and generated £52 billion in tax revenue. International visitors spent £32 billion in the UK in 2024. In 2025 there were an estimated 44.3 million inbound visits, with £34.6 billion of spending.

**For comparison: manufacturing.** The UK is the world's 11th-largest manufacturing nation, contributing £220bn of output in 2024. Manufacturing employs 2.6 million people, just over nine percent of UK jobs. Even the "making" economy sits mostly at the high-value end: aerospace, pharmaceuticals and branded food.

> **The second controversial question:** Britain produces almost no raw commodities, yet it is one of the world's richest nations. Africa produces most of the world's cocoa, a large share of its minerals and a growing share of its coffee, yet remains among the poorest regions. Is that an accident of history, or a system working exactly as designed?

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### IV. Ratcliffe-on-Soar: the furnace that went cold

On the road to Nottingham, the cooling towers rise out of the flat Midlands landscape. Ratcliffe-on-Soar was Britain's last coal-fired power station. Passing it feels like driving past the gravestone of an economic era.

The plant began generating in 1967. With 2GW of capacity, enough to power two million homes, it had eight cooling towers 114 metres high. It shut down on 30 September 2024, ending more than 140 years of coal-fired power generation in Britain. A two-year decommissioning process followed, to be followed in turn by demolition.

The speed of the change is remarkable. The world's first coal power plant opened in London in 1882. As recently as 2012, coal supplied 39 percent of Britain's electricity.

That is the lesson. Britain industrialised on coal, became rich, then moved up the value chain into finance, services and intellectual property. Having climbed the ladder, it is now dismantling the rungs behind it. Even the Ratcliffe site is planned for redevelopment as a zero-carbon technology and energy hub. Britain is not abandoning value. It is upgrading it.

Contrast this with Africa. Many African states are told they must skip the fossil-fuel stage that built Britain. Often the people telling them are the same advisers, lenders and climate financiers based in London. Meanwhile, those states are expected to keep exporting raw materials at commodity prices.

> **The third controversial question:** Britain burned coal for 142 years to build the wealth it now holds. Who has the moral authority to tell a Zambian, Zimbabwean or Nigerian factory it must industrialise clean, on a budget, while the old industrial powers keep the value-added end of every supply chain?

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### V. The museums: the ultimate value-added business

Then came London's museums, and the theme of this investigation became impossible to ignore.

Britain's great museums are free to enter. They are also among the most powerful economic engines in the country. The British Museum received over 6.4 million visitors in 2025, second only to the Natural History Museum's record 7.1 million. Britain's leading attractions recorded 165 million visits, more than 46 million of them by overseas visitors. Those visitors fill hotels, restaurants, taxis and shops, feeding the £147 billion tourism economy.

Walk through the African galleries and you meet the Benin Bronzes. The British Museum holds around 944 objects from the historic Kingdom of Benin. That is nearly twice the number held by the next-largest holder, Berlin's Ethnologisches Museum. The only Nigerian institution among the ten largest holders, the National Museum in Benin City, holds just 285.

How they arrived is not in dispute. British forces captured Benin City in February 1897, and no one knows how many of Benin's people were killed in the conquest. In 1950 and 1951 the museum sold 29 Benin plaques as supposed "duplicates", a judgement later research has shown to be wrong.

Others have moved. Berlin transferred ownership of 512 Benin objects to Nigeria in a single agreement, the largest repatriation to date.

Here is the parallel that ties this investigation together. A Benin Bronze is the cocoa bean of culture. Africa made it. Britain displays it, interprets it, markets it and builds a tourism economy around it. The African originator receives nothing from the millions who walk past it each year.

The same logic runs from the cocoa farm to Bournville to the museum gallery. Africa supplies the raw material, whether bean, mineral or masterpiece. Britain adds context, branding, finance and a shop at the exit, and keeps the margin.

> **The fourth controversial question:** If African heritage helps draw millions of visitors to London's free museums every year, should Nigeria, Ghana or Ethiopia receive a share of the tourism revenue those objects help generate? And if not, why not?

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### VI. The real driver: owning the end of the chain

Strip away the statistics and one principle explains the British economy. **Wealth does not go to whoever produces. It goes to whoever owns the last step before the customer.**

- Britain does not grow cocoa. It owns the factory, the brand heritage and the supermarket shelf.

- Britain no longer burns coal. It owns the finance that funds the energy transition.

- Britain did not make the Benin Bronzes. It owns the gallery, the ticket economy and the story told about them.

- Britain does not mine gold or copper. It hosts the exchanges, insurers and law firms that price, protect and litigate them.

Africa's tragedy is not a lack of resources. It is a lack of value-chain ownership. The 70 percent of chocolate's value captured by brands and retailers sits entirely at the consumer end, thousands of miles from the farm.

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### VII. What Africa must do now

This is not a call for resentment. It is a business case. African economies do not need to copy Britain's coal century. They need to copy its one durable insight: **move up the chain.**

1. **Process at origin, and own the processors.** Grinding beans in Abidjan or Kumasi only helps if the factories are African-owned. Otherwise the margin simply moves offshore.

2. **Build African consumer brands.** The 70 percent margin belongs to brand owners. Africa needs its own Cadburys, selling to Africa's 1.4 billion consumers first.

3. **Coordinate producer power.** A Ghana–Côte d'Ivoire cocoa bloc, expanded to Nigeria and Cameroon, could set prices instead of accepting them.

4. **Build financial services.** Britain's biggest surplus comes from finance. African capital, pensions and sovereign wealth must be managed in Lagos, Nairobi and Kigali, not routed through London.

5. **Turn heritage into an industry.** Push for restitution and build world-class museums at home, so the tourism value of African culture is earned in Africa.

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### VIII. The questions Britain and Africa must answer

- Can it be fair trade when the grower earns about a twentieth of the product's value?

- Why did Africa's share of the chocolate bar fall from up to half in the 1970s to around 6 percent today, while the industry grew?

- Is Britain's services economy a model for Africa, or a business model that depends on Africa staying a raw-material supplier?

- Should multinationals that buy African commodities and pay contested tax in Britain be subject to value-sharing obligations at origin?

- When an African leader signs a deal advised by a London consultancy, financed by a London bank and insured by a London underwriter, whose economy is that deal really built to serve?

- And the hardest question for us as Africans: how much longer will we export the bean and import the bar?

Standing outside Bournville, the smell of chocolate was sweet. The arithmetic was not. Britain has mastered the art of earning the most from what it produces the least. Until Africa learns the same lesson, we will keep growing the world's wealth and being paid in peanuts.

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*Africa Brew Brief is the investigative editorial series of Africa One Media, part of Africa One Group.*