(Business in Cameroon) - Cameroonian banker Josiane Salomé Tchoungui is the new Managing Director of Atlantic Cocoa, the first cocoa processing company to be established at the Kribi industrial port zone (in 2020).  

The new appointee is an experienced banker, who recently ended a 5-year run as the managing director of Orabank Benin. Before her position at Orabank Benin, she assumed executive positions at the Cameroonian subsidiaries of major banks, including BGFI, Ecobank, and Standard Chartered Bank.

As the new managing director of Atlantic Cocoa, Josiane Tchoungui replaces Ivorian Pierre Ouattara. She is thus the first Cameroonian to lead the 48,000 tons (expandable to 64,000 tons annually) cocoa processing unit. According to reliable sources, the newly-promoted executive is not in uncharted territory. She is already familiar with the project since she was the Deputy General Manager of BGFI Cameroon when the bank funded the project.  

The Cameroonian banker is thus switching to the agribusiness industry, which she has always had a passion for (according to her confidences). 

She is appointed at a time when the cocoa sector is still dominated by exports despite the installed industrial crushers with significant processing capacities. To boost local cocoa processing, a goal much cherished by the Cocoa and Coffee Interprofessional Council (CICC) and Cameroonian authorities, she will have to step up the collection of raw cocoa beans and keep production costs under control against a backdrop of rising energy costs.  

BRM