Joseph Boahen Aidoo, Cocobod CEO
GHANAIANS HAVE been asked to celebrate the National Chocolate Week with bars of chocolate, cocoa beverages and chocolate-infused dishes. Members of the public are also encouraged to share photos and videos of their chocolate moments using the hashtags: #EatGhChocolate #GhChocolateWeek #GhChocolateReigns #EatChocolateStayHealthyGrowGhana.
On February 10, this year, the Chocolate City at the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange opened.
For the next five days various media organizations and chocolatiers will be present to encourage the patrons to share their chocolate moments on digital platforms and win prizes.
The National Chocolate Week is being organized through the collaborative effort of COCOBOD, the Ghana Tourism Authority, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, cocoa processing companies and other stakeholders in the cocoa industry.
Rev. Fr. Andrew Campbell, Parish Priest of Christ the King Catholic Church, joined the ongoing national campaign to encourage the consumption of chocolate and cocoa products, with a powerful personal story of how his consistent consumption of cocoa powder has made him virtually immune to malaria in over three decades.
“I have been taking cocoa powder for the past 30 years. This morning I already had two mugs of cocoa. I do that every day; I take two, three, four mugs of cocoa every day,” the reverend father said in a video released as part of the National Chocolate Week celebration.
“I have had malaria once in those 30 years and that was because I didn’t take my cocoa for one week, and I got malaria,” Rev. Fr. Campbell said. “I got it once in over 30 years and I attributed that to the cocoa powder I take.”
The National Chocolate Week celebration which began on the February 8 ended yesterday. It was under the theme, ‘Eat Chocolate; Stay Healthy; Grow Ghana’. The week was packed with activities to encourage the consumption of chocolate confectionery, beverages and chocolate-infused dishes even beyond the period of the celebration.
Similarly, the Most Rev. Paul K. Boafo, Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana, who called himself a proud son of a cocoa farmer, also recounted how cocoa seeds were regularly incorporated into the family meals due to their nutritional benefits.
“Growing up, as a young boy in the Western Region, following my father to the cocoa farm, we would even use the little seeds as a form of food in our stew. We will pluck it, boil it, grind, and it will be part of the stew because of its nutritional value,” he recalled.
“Chocolate comes from our cash crop, cocoa, which our farmers have cultivated all these years and it has a lot of value for us. Apart from the money it brings to us,” he noted.