Orange Pill Cocoa is the first Web3 cocoa cooperative in West Africa. 

By combining regenerative cryptoeconomics and regenerative agriculture, we want to enable small cocoa farmers to take the “Orange Pill”: a regenerative cocoa that’s much more than just an orange bean.

A regenerative cocoa that aims to :

• Help farmers to switch to regenerative agriculture
• Effectively combat child labour by providing schooling for farmers’ children
• Regenerate old cocoa plantations and restore forests
• Increase farmers’ incomes through carbon credits
• Involve consumers in the governance of the cocoa sector
• Be compliant with European regulations on deforestation
• Offer a solution to cocoa importers who wish to inset rather than offset (buy low-carbon cocoa rather than having to offset the footprint of ‘normal’ cocoa)

How does it work?

Step 1: We help and train the farmers in our cooperative in the Daloa region in Ivory Coast to adopt regenerative practices. This enables them to increase their yields, improve the quality of the cocoa they produce and stop using adulterated pesticides in the wrong doses, which kill many Ivorian farmers every year.

Step 2: With your support, we enable these farmers to obtain organic certification, doubling the cooperative’s income.

Step 3 : With this additional income, we are sending our farmers’ children to school, carrying out reforestation operations, and setting up a biochar production line to improve the soil on our cooperative’s plots.

Step 4: With the help of our friends from Shamba and the use of satellite images, we are able to prove that we have not participated in deforestation and are therefore compliant with future European regulations on deforestation. A competitive advantage that will prove decisive when the European market restricts access to compliant cocoa only at the end of 2024.

Step 5: By implementing dMRV methodologies, in partnership with Shamba and ixo, our reforestation and carbon sequestration efforts are rewarded by the creation of carbon credits and impact certificates that can either be sold or transferred to the cocoa importer in order to inset its carbon footprint.

A Web3 cooperative?

Orange Pill cacao is a cooperative that aims to give people interested in ReFi the opportunity to have a concrete and operative experience of the regenerative cryptoeconomy.

• By creating a cross-pollination, of growers and consumers via ReFi, we want to create a community uniting the two ends of the consumption chain, which are also the two parties that are abused by the system.

• By enabling them to talk to each other, we want to change the rules of a coordination game in which farmers and consumers are currently the big losers.

• By giving them the opportunity to coordinate, we hope to enable them to maximise their gains.

Step 6: We allow consumers to join the cooperative via NFTs, each representing a share in the cooperative. If they complete the KYC procedure, they will be able to obtain voting rights and participate in the governance of the cooperative, in accordance with Ivorian law.

Step 7: Now that our cooperative has a solid foundation, our aim is to change scale: with the surplus, develop the means to process the cocoa produced by our cooperative ourselves in order to capture more value for our farmers.

Step 8: Use the QF to provide technical, community and financial support for the creation of new web3 cooperatives in Africa.

Step 9: Use the BTC Lightning Network to track all the payements made to the farmers to prove that they are receiving the premiums they are due.

Step 10: Put all our certification data on-chain, so that it can be consulted directly by both the wholesalers who buy our cocoa and the consumers of chocolate from our cooperative (We are currently studying the options available. Regen network, PGN, Ixo and EmpowerChain offer great solutions. We look forward to discussing them with you!).

What we have achieved so far :

• We wrote the statutes of our cooperative in Ivory Coast

• We’ve identified 50 partner farmers who want to try this pioneering experiment with us (and you!)

• We've identified a chocolate maker in burkina faso who may be interested in organic regenerative cocoa

• We’ve contacted Shamba, ixo and Open Food Chain to find out how we can become part of their network

Who are we?

• Kouakou Koffi. Agricultural engineer, doctoral student in regenerative agriculture and BioChar at the Centre national ivoirien de recherche agronomique (CNRA), project manager at the CNRA and soil management consultant for the RainForest Alliance label.

• Amon Bazongo. CEO of YanFoma, former digital and innovation officer at the headquarters of the African Union, developer specialising in AI. Steward of the GreenPill Afrique Francophone chapter.

• David Many. Co-founder of the Swiss NGO Cosmos for Humanity. Steward of the GreenPill Afrique Francophone chapter.

If you’re interested in West Africa, cocoa, satellite data and ReFi, and if you’d like to experience ReFi for yourself, you can follow our Charmverse to find out about our latest news, meeting reports and the difficulties we're facing with our project. And why not join us?

Oh, and yes, why "Orange" Pill ?

• As you can see, cocoa beans as cocoa shells are not only Green, they can be Orange as well (and even Purple!).

• We believe that Bitcoin has a role to play in the development of the ReFi movement. Merging 'Greenpills' with 'Orangepills' could create great synergies. Especially in Africa.