His face, the colors, the background. A perfect shot to promote pineapple and its eco-sustainable cultivation. Too bad that a This is Johnston nobody asked him if he wanted to sponsor the sale of pineapples in the Netherlands for years. Without getting paid. And they’ve also mangled his name.
Aided by a lawyer who assisted him pro-bono, Johnston took the Dutch shops to court and reached an agreement before the sentence, the details of which are unknown.
The photo with her smiling and healthy image, holding a cut and peeled pineapple, against the backdrop of green and lush cultivated fields under the clear African sky, successfully promoted the sustainable purchase of African fruit. It was present in all the fruit and vegetable departments of the Dutch supermarket chain, Albert Heijn, the largest in the country.
Before its removal, the poster read: “Kwabena, the Albert Heijn of Ghana. Twice as good. Our fruit is not only good, but it also gives you a good feeling. This is because our growers, together with the AH Foundation, contribute to improving the living conditions of the local community “.
First mistake: Kwabena is not her name. Second: the subject was not notified of the ad campaign with his face. Third: the conditions of the local community do not seem to be the best in the country. This was told by a Dutch journalist, Olivier van Beemen, who decided to go to the bottom of the matter: he took a flight to Ghana and went on the trail of Johnston and the advertised sustainability.
Arriving in Nsawam, a town 30 kilometers from Accra, van Beemen first went to the headquarters of Blue Skies, the British multinational that supplies half of Europe with fruit and vegetables, including the Dutch shops Albert Heijn. In Ghana Blue Skies has a thousand employees. Buy pineapple, mango, and papaya from local growers.
Second stage, the charitable and sustainable works of Blue Skies. And therefore of Albert Heijn. “In the village of Fotobi they built three classrooms and a teachers’ room. The paint on the walls is all peeling, the blackboards broken. In Amanfrom, they built a public bathroom: for two thousand people. The government demolished it”.
Contacted by van Beemen, Blue Skies management replied that the agreement with the local government was that the maintenance of the donations was their responsibility.
The reportage gets worse every day. The journalist reports that many employees said they were not happy with the working conditions and the pay: not protected enough in the cold rooms for 80 euros a month. And that’s double the regular salary in Ghana. The British firm responded, van Beemen writes, that employee coughs and colds are common for the change of seasons.
Reaching Johnston in his village, the revelation: “I never consented to the use of my image and they gave me no money to use it. My name is not Kabwena.” Albert Heijn thinks differently: Blue Skies would have given him the ok to use. This happened in October last year.
But not all the Dutch have deceived him. A lawyer, Bert-Jan van Manen, took his case to heart. For free. The Dutch face of pineapples has not come to sentence. He reached an agreement with Blue Skies, of which he did not want to reveal the details and said: “I am very satisfied”.
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