Stephen Yaw Opoku

Stephen Yaw Opoku is a Plant Physiologist at the Physiology/Biochemistry Division of the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana. He manages several foreign financed projects on cocoa in Ghana. These projects include on-farm varietal testing financed by the European Commission, African Cocoa Initiative financed by WCF/USAID, the Ghana Fine Flavour Cocoa project financed by Guittard Chocolate and Tachibana Ghana Ltd, and the establishment of a Quality Training Centre at CRIG financed by TCHO Ventures and parent company, Ezaki Glico. Stephen is a cocoa flavour evaluation expert and has evaluated samples from over fifty cocoa producing countries as he shadowed the Technical Committee of the 2019 edition of the Cocoa of Excellence and International Cocoa Awards. He has trained over one thousand cocoa extension, quality control officers, cocoa farmer as well other stakeholders along the value chain. Stephen has been a member of the ICCO ad hoc panel on fine/flavour cocoa since 2010.