Selassie Atadika continues to live her art in the most inspiring way. Through a successfully-crafted culinary career, she has managed to build the globally-accepted Midunu brand of luxury Ghanaian chocolates truffles.
Both owner and brand have heeded President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s call in regards to ensuring manufacturing finished chocolate products in Ghana. The Midunu brand has garnered a lot of traction within the market, placing the brand and Ghana’s cocoa credentials on solid footing.
The hand-crafted chocolate truffles are available to consumers in the United States and Canada. Midunu’s chocolates take you on a journey, blending unique herbs and spices from across the African continent with ethically sourced and produced Ghanaian cocoa.
As a proud African, Selassie’s focus is to ensure that Midunu chocolates first of all are available in Africa with focus especially on Nigeria and South Africa and she hopes to partner with GEPA to push this Proudly Ghanaian brand further internationally.
Born in Ghana, Selassie’s passion for the culinary arts led her to start a chocolate company. After completing her Master’s degree from Columbia University in International Affairs, Selassie embarked on a decade of humanitarian work through the United Nations throughout Africa.
Inspired by the rich origin stories of the cuisines she encountered and troubled by the injustices that plagued food systems throughout the continent, Selassie set about introducing her ‘New African Cuisine’ to her home in Ghana – bringing local, seasonal, and underutilized ingredients to the forefront in the dishes she creates.
Her culinary approach has caught attention all over the world and granted her international awards and recognition including being a finalist in the 2019 Basque Culinary World Prize, #73 in the Best Chef Awards 2020 and 2021 recipient of the La Liste New Destination Champion Award for Africa.
Despite being the world’s second largest producer of cocoa, very little chocolate is actually produced in Ghana – the vast majority of the cocoa beans are exported to the Western world to be processed and packaged. Selassie saw chocolate as a familiar vehicle to introduce lesser-known herbs, spices, and teas from across Africa to conscious customers around the world while creating jobs, supporting local producers, and adding value locally in Ghana.
Each chocolate is expertly crafted by a team of female chocolatiers in Ghana and named after a different African woman – the culinary custodians of the continent. There is “Aicha” – the perfect pairing of an earthy green tea and a refreshing mint drenched in dark chocolate, “Almaz” – a blend of fragrant spices and Ethiopian chilli blend known as berbere, “Kukua” – a white chocolate ganache infused with moringa.
Selassie describes Midunu as her love story to Africa – a means of celebrating and preserving Africa’s culinary heritage. Atadika is one of a handful of local artisanal chocolate maker and chocolatiers who have been working to add value to chocolate in Ghana.
The Midunu Chocolates have stood out internationally and earned Atadika respected publications and appearances in The New York Times, Washington Post, Bon Appetit Magazine, CNN African Voices, The Financial Times, Al, Jazeera, The Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR), OmVärlden, as well as mentioned in Vogue, National Geographic’s The Plate, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Ebony. Her cuisine has been featured at a State Dinner and the prestigious James Beard Foundation in the US.
She holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a Bachelor’s Degree in Geography modified with Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College.
After over a decade spent engaged in humanitarian work with the United Nations and years of self-teaching in the culinary arts, Selassie Atadika completed course work at the Culinary Institute of America. She is a founding member of Trio Toque, the first nomadic restaurant in Dakar, Senegal. Atadika brought her innovative approach to African cuisine back home in 2014.
Chef Selassie Atadika is in the process of launching the Midunu Institute. The pilot project of the institute will undertake documentation of existing culinary practices in three of the 16 regions of Ghana by youth ambassadors to kick off a national conversation among youth and middle-class consumers about food, agriculture and culture.
“This research will be combined with a multi-media behavior change campaign showcasing challenges and successes in local food systems as well as exhibiting the culinary uses of regional ingredients, while contributing to the protection of culture and heritage,” she says.
The recent push by the Government of Ghana to process more and more cocoa in Ghana is a welcome one which changes the narrative of Ghana being a point of extraction of cash crops.
Enormous amounts of value can be added here at the source of the world finest cocoa producing country. These delicious truffles not only tell the story of the flavors of the continent, the embody the new chapter for value addition and quality cocoa products made in Ghana.
Atadika says “Midunu is my love story to Africa. For me, eating is a celebration of food’s origins – the paths it travels on the way to our tables and the people it brings together through the journey. Our chocolates tell the story of the places I have been, the cultures I have interacted with, and the people I have had the pleasure to meet across the continent.”
She adds that “to share these experiences with the world, I have enrobed these flavors in chocolate – a medium pretty much everyone enjoys. Did you know that very little chocolate is actually produced in West Africa despite producing more cocoa than any region in the world? Too often, commodities like cocoa are exported to the Western world to be mass-produced into bland, overly sweet chemically preserved bars and candies, stripping cocoa of its bold flavor and rich origin story.
“That’s where Midunu is different. We work with local farmers and producers to cultivate and create our chocolates right here in Ghana. I want to introduce you to a new way of thinking about chocolate. When you open a box of Midunu Chocolates, I want you to taste the subtle infusion of the local bounty – seasonal teas, tisanes, and complex spice blends. These flavors represent the beautiful patchwork that is Africa’s culinary heritage.”
From humble beginnings, Midunu has grown to become a nomadic and private dining enterprise in Accra which embodies ‘New African Cuisine’ and offers culinary that celebrates Africa’s cultural heritage. Its goal is to create experiences where culture, community and cuisine intersect.
Midunu employs local, seasonal, and underutilized ingredients including traditional grains and proteins to deliver Africa’s bounty to the table. With an eye towards biodiversity and sustainability, it curates white-linen nomadic events, private dining, retail and lifestyle products, and a bespoke event space. Midunu’s Nomadic Dinners have attracted attention with diners from five continents.
