Government to establish Tetteh Quarshie Cocoa Museum – Minister

Catherine Afeku

Mrs Catherine Ablema Afeku, Minister of Tourism Arts and Culture, on Thursday stated that government is set to establish Tetteh Quarshie Cocoa Museum, at Mampong.

The initiative to establish the museum she said was in line with the vision of the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to promote local consumption, across board.

Mrs Afeku made this known, when she officially launched this year’s National Chocolate Day celebration scheduled for February 4 and the 2017 National Tourism Awards, scheduled for March 3.

The theme for the chocolate day celebration is “Eat Ghana, Eat Chocolate”.

She said the move is to honour the founding fathers of the nation, who strived so hard to get the country to where it finds itself today, saying; “a nation that you die for must recognise and honour you”.

She said people within Ghana and the West African zone must be encouraged to promote the consumption of their local goods, and Ghana had taken the lead to promote domestic tourism as well as local chocolate consumption.

The sector Minister said the day was set aside to promote Ghana’s cocoa by encouraging people to patronise the product and the Ministry was working to ensure that.

“The Ministry would collaborate with the Ghana Tourism Federation and the Cocoa Processing Company to ensure that hotels across the country would provide chocolates to guests as one of the simplest way of promoting cocoa and pushing the consumption effort,” she said.

Mrs Afeku urged Ghanaians to consume chocolate on the day and make it an agenda to buy a bar of chocolate for their loved ones every day.

She noted that, the National Tourism Awards would mainstream excellent service culture in the tourism sector, saying it is a way of making practitioners aware of the fact that, the industry expects them to put up best practices wherever they find themselves.

Mr Noah Amenya, Public Affairs Manager, COCOBOD said Ghana cocoa had maintained its position as the best quality cocoa in the world, and in order to continue producing in large quantities there was the need to promote its consumption in the sub region.

He said ‘it was time to tell the world that, we cannot continue to export in large quantities, without making good use of it, because it contains enough minerals to help in our human development.    

“We can introduce cocoa in every food that we eat, so that the campaign for cocoa production would have to go beyond chocolate and get us to introduce natural cocoa powder in the various recipes that we take,” he noted.

He urged Ghanaians to ensure that, everyone who comes into the country feels that Ghana is the best cocoa producer of the world.

Mr Ben Anane-Nsiah, of the Ghana Tourism Authority said the National Tourism Awards on the other hand would be the 13th edition since its inception to award performance of industry players in the year 2017.

He said the event, which would be on the theme; “Promoting domestic tourism,” would be preceded by Regional awards in all ten regions, from February 9 to 14.

“Out of the winners from the regions, a jury would be set to choose the best for the national awards,” he said.

Mr Anane-Nsiah noted that the awards would be in five categories including; accommodation, catering, travel, media and outstanding or individual contribution area.

Source: GNA

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