DAIRY SPECIAL AROUND THE WORLD FOR KIWIFRUIT Sunny George Gwanpua is a man on a mission – one that has taken him around the world. It’s a journey that is benefiting New Zealand’s food industry and may eventually help to develop one in his own country, Cameroon. It’s a journey kicked off by tumult. “Initially I was more inclined towards the medical sciences, that’s what I wanted to do,” Gwanpua says. “I became more interested in food because of food crises in the developing countries. 32 MAY 2016 “In my country, we are one of the key exporters of raw materials like cocoa and coffee, but at the end of the day they need to import processed food like chocolate - it doesn’t make sense. So I thought maybe it’s time that people start to get involved in understanding how to process food material, preservation, because we can have things like post-harvest loss of about 50 per cent in my country.” Gwanpua had a dream and the desire to see it realised. But he also had smarts. After completing a Bachelor of Biochemistry at the University of Buea in Cameroon, he was one of just two from his country to be offered a Belgium government scholarship at KU University Leuven to do a Masters in Food Technology. At just 23 he left home and his young wife Angeline for a new continent and the next stage of his educational journey. “It was different but I was fine, I was happy with it,” he says. “It was a major change, particularly the climate because I got there in the winter. But there were things I admired; I saw a culture of hard work, where you get up at 7am for school and everyone is busy, and people are going to work and trying to catch buses.”
FT-May16
To see the actual publication please follow the link above