Clad in the apron of his trade, Bonaventure Boma chides employees while they take steaming baguettes out of the hot ovens that have helped make him “the king of bread” in Togo.
From a modest background, Boma has spent 30 years kneading dough and now has two large modern bakeries in Lome, capital of the west African country.
“I’m curious, I travel a lot,” 57-year-old Boma said, reflecting on his success. “When I stayed in Senegal 30 years ago, I saw that people already ate a lot of bread and thought: ‘Why not in Togo?’”
Photo: AFP
French bread used to be a rare commodity in Togo, not surprising, as wheat is not grown in the country and must be imported.
However, Boma has led the push to widen its appeal, making his flour from sorghum, cassava and yams, all cultivated in northern Togo, where he introduced his baguettes last month.
“Today, bread has become a breakfast habit, and they are even eaten at teatime,” Boma said.
Fifty bakeries in Lome now compete in an increasingly competitive market, with vendors on three-wheeled auto-rickshaws also selling fresh loaves to office staff in the city. A further 100 bakeries are estimated to have opened across the country.
It reflects the rising popularity of bread among the urban middle classes in west Africa, with even big French retailers such as La Brioche Doree and Paul opening shops in Dakar and Abidjan.
Boma knows all about hard work. As a 13-year-old, he worked in groundnut and millet fields for the equivalent of 0.38 euro per day (US$0.43), roughly the price of one of his baguettes today.
After opening a small grocery store, he founded his first bakery in 1992 with a 45,000 euro bank loan.
He said he “learned on the job with a very experienced, elderly baker.”
In the 1990s, he sought to improve his baking methods by traveling to Switzerland to take a training course.
“Every baker has his secret for kneading the bread. I learned several techniques. I quickly introduced different methods once I came back to Lome,” he said.
The business expanded to two bakeries and his company, Bomaco, is now a household name, employing about 80 people.
He has also invested in a small hotel, two restaurants and a nightclub, which he runs with his daughter, although he said: “Above all, I stick to my bread.”
“The early days were very difficult, because it was a real adventure, but business progressively picked up because of the quality of my loaves,” Boma said.
Boma’s bakeries now sell about 5,000 baguettes per day, including to supermarkets, military barracks and the international airport.
Despite the colonial legacy of the product, bread sales have risen and Boma has more plans for expanding his business.
“The loaves from the Bomaco company have an exceptional flavor,” said Albert Djinou, owner of a supermarket in the capital that buys Boma’s bread. “It’s the bread most in demand among my clients. Mr Boma is the king of bread.”
The success of Boma’s bread even earned him an invitation to represent Togo at a bread fair in Milan, Italy, two years ago, where a key theme was “feeding the planet.”
Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole imported more than 23 million tonnes of wheat in 2015, according to the US Department of Agriculture, and Boma believes that the demand for wheat will continue to grow.
An optimist, Boma is now thinking and talking big, with plans to open his own national bakery chain and even a large seafront hotel.
“In the hotel business, in gastronomy, I’m betting on an African clientele. I’ve just come back from Accra and I noticed that there are almost no white people today in the grand hotels, there are only Africans,” he said.
“This is my final project,” he said. “If I manage to pull it off, that will be an end to my dreams.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”