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.”
RUN IT BACK: A succesful first project working with hyperscalers to design chips encouraged MediaTek to start a second project, aiming to hit stride in 2028 MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s biggest smartphone chip supplier, yesterday said it is engaging a second hyperscaler to help design artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators used in data centers following a similar project expected to generate revenue streams soon. The first AI accelerator project is to bring in US$1 billion revenue next year and several billion US dollars more in 2027, MediaTek chief executive officer Rick Tsai (蔡力行) told a virtual investor conference yesterday. The second AI accelerator project is expected to contribute to revenue beginning in 2028, Tsai said. MediaTek yesterday raised its revenue forecast for the global AI accelerator used
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has secured three construction permits for its plan to build a state-of-the-art A14 wafer fab in Taichung, and is likely to start construction soon, the Central Taiwan Science Park Bureau said yesterday. Speaking with CNA, Wang Chun-chieh (王俊傑), deputy director general of the science park bureau, said the world’s largest contract chipmaker has received three construction permits — one to build a fab to roll out sophisticated chips, another to build a central utility plant to provide water and electricity for the facility and the other to build three office buildings. With the three permits, TSMC
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
RSS