Unlike 99% of chocolate that is made in wealthy nations, MIA makes chocolate in Africa – the world’s poorest continent – to provide sustainable jobs, transfer skills and create four times more revenue than the export of raw cocoa.

In 2019, MIA production addressed eight United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, supported 15 full-time jobs and protected over 5,000 trees in Madagascar.

The MIA ‘1 for Change’ impact programme committed to ‘MIA Green’ to offset CO2 with a tree planting programme and created a ‘Fruit Tree Scholarship’ fund to facilitate secondary school education for vulnerable students.

MIA works with a variety of suppliers in Africa to make products locally. The purpose is to unite a network of the best supply partners around the production of delicious products and to support their businesses in the process.

The chocolate making team is at the heart of the Made-In-Africa business model that creates value-added products to improve livelihoods. Beyond the production team, each batch of MIA made in Madagascar also benefits the communities that provide the ingredients, materials and services to transform fine flavour cocoa into delicious chocolate.

Below is a summary of the the social benefit enjoyed by the communities that form a network of 14 local supply partners.

The fourth largest island in the world, Madagascar’s flora and fauna evolved in isolation for millions of years. As a result, the island nation is home to 15% of the world’s species and 80% of all plants and animals found in Madagascar are endemic. Creating sustainable livelihoods that protect the environment while providing local communities with jobs is crucial to save the unique species that live in Madagascar.

Cocoa trees are beneficial for the environment as they form forests and require a shade canopy from a second layer of hardwood trees. These forests form ecosystems for indigenous plants and animals.

The Sambirano Valley is in Northwest Madagascar, just outside the cocoa capital Ambanja. The Sambirano River extends from the mountainous Upper Valley that lemurs call home to the coastal Lower Valley with rich mangroves forests.

The Upper Valley is also home to the Tsaratanana Nature Reserve, a park under the highest protected status due to its unique flora and fauna.

Protecting the environment with sustainable livelihoods is crucial to safeguarding the region’s rich natural resources and providing local communities with alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture. 

In addition to the benefits of value-added chocolate production, MIA dedicates 1% of sales to the ‘1 for Change’ social development programme that can either help protect a local endangered species, create a healthier environment or improve a community’s livelihoods.

Projects completed in our first two years of trading include a school kitchen for better nutrition, fruit tree scholarships to support secondary education and a reforestation programme to offset CO2, provide environmental education and protect lemurs. The school kitchen benefits 272 students, 50 fruit trees scholarships were awarded and 60 trees were planted to offset CO2.

MIA is the work of many. In addition to extending our appreciation to our supply partners in Africa, we want to thank the rest of you who make the MIA vision possible.

Customers are creating positive change in Africa with their purchases of MIA at retailers around the world, and it’s thanks to the shared passion of investors, suppliers, distributors and everyone in between that we have the opportunity to bring MIA to market and tell the Made-In-Africa story.

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You can download the full PDF 2019 Impact Report here: https://we.tl/t-ToEtMy30YV