The smallest of business ideas can sometimes be the thing that makes one excel in the entrepreneurship world. For Emi-Beth Quantson, her idea that started as a small venture is creating jobs, empowering women, and providing opportunities for local farmers.
She is the Founder and CEO of Kawa Moka Coffee Company, Ghana’s leading social enterprise coffee company and roaster. Her dedication, creativity, and hard work have transformed her local venture into an international success story.
How did she do it?
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Education
Born in 1987, Emi-Beth grew up in Ghana and was raised by parents who were partly entrepreneurs. Her dad is an agronomist who ventured into hospitality industry. Her mother is a lawyer who got into private practice early in her career. From them, her entrepreneurship skills were just a matter of time before she made a way into it.
After high school, Emi-Beth attended Ashesi University, Ghana, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. Her time at the university was the start of her coffee shop entrepreneurship venture
Corporate Journey of Emi-Beth
Emi-Beth started working part-time at Ghana Home Loans while still at the university.
In 2007, she opened a coffee shop at the university’s Labone Campus as a project to embrace her love for coffee spaces, taking advantage of a gazebo in the campus gardens. “Starting the coffee shop was a very random idea,” she said in an interview.
The coffee shop grew into a favorite spot where students could get refreshments, coffee or just hangout.
After graduation in 2008, Emi-Beth ran the cafe successfully for two years, while working full time with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and obtaining her Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA) qualification.
At PwC, Emi-Beth worked as a tax consultant and transfer pricing expert in both Ghana and Kenya.
Entrepreneurship Journey
In Kenya, Emi-Beth worked with PwC between 2011 and 2013 where the country’s cool coffee shops such as Java House reminded her of her own small business in yester years. She knew that coffee was where her heart was and this inspired her to give it a second attempt.
Determined to start and operate a coffee shop that would provide coffee lovers with a cool place to hang-out, she quit her corporate career in 2013.
In 2015, Emi-Beth founded Kawa Moka Company. She collaborated with Impact Hub Accra, an organization that fosters social innovation. Impact Hub offered Emi-Beth space for the coffee shop on their premises in exchange for her accounting services.
The same year, 2015, she secured $5,000 and 30,000 Ghana cedis ($5,206) through her participation in the Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Program and Ghana’s Presidential Pitch, respectively.
By investing her savings and additional support from the award prizes, family, friends, and her customers, Kawa Moka broke even after a year of operations.
In 2019, Kawa Moka transitioned from a coffee shop business to focus fully on roasting locally-grown Robusta coffee beans.
About Kawa Moka
Kawa Moka is a social enterprise coffee company that aims to put Ghana’s coffee on the map by producing the highest quality coffee. The company aims to give smallholder farmers in Ghana access to a global market leading to improved livelihood.
Some of the coffee produced at Kawa Moka includes prekese, dawadawa, ginger, lemon and moringa, boosting the health benefits of the coffee. The company is also immersed in the Green Economy by using solar energy for the production.
Inspired by her mother’s work of providing legal representation to disadvantaged women, Kawa Moka is committed to employing women.
Kawa Moka works with women who are going through the legal aid system; and young women from deprived backgrounds who had completed high school and were looking for employment.
Challenges that Kawa Moka has faced
Emi-Beth acknowledges that one of the major challenges was moving past the thinking process to just start up the business. Starting took a while especially after being in the corporate world. However, the encouragement to dare to try was the focus that grew her passion for establishing Kawa Moka.
Secondly, the difficult access to finance and funding opportunities. For a while, access to finance was difficult and she initially depended on revenue from customers to keep the business afloat. Luckily, she managed to win the $5,000 prize from Tony Elumelu Foundation that helped stabilize Kawa Moka.
Awards & Recognitions
Emi-Beth has been recognized as a young leader and a change maker. She is the immediate past Curator for the Ho Hub of the Global Shapers Community, a youth initiative of the World Economic Forum.
She won the Ghana Startup Cup in 2015 because of her potential of representing Ghanaian entrepreneurship to the world.
The Startup Cup competition provided financial support to Kawa Moka making the company thrive. She was once the winner of the prestigious Ghana Presidential Pitch Competition.
Emi-Beth is a LEAD Scholar and member of the Leadership Council of the Coffee Roasters Guild of the Specialty Coffee Association, the leading global organization of coffee specialists.
Family
Emi-Beth is married with two children. In her spare time she enjoys reading and outdoor activities.
“To the women looking to start up, pay attention to the money. Keep accounts. Be sure to collect your money (don’t be shy) and learn to identify people who will mention your name and lift you up in rooms where you are not even present.” Emi-Beth
