MINISTER OF Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto has announced that beginning from September 2018, cocoa drinks will be included in the school feeding programme nationwide.
The move, according to him, is part of efforts to create 'local taste' for cocoa as Ghana strives to increase its domestic consumption of cocoa.
Dr. Afriyie Akoto made this known in a keynote address delivered on Tuesday in Accra at the Cocoa Investors' Forum and meeting of the Joint Technical Committee of Cote d' Ivoire and Ghana.
The forum sought to find ways of attracting private sector investments into the cocoa sectors of both Ghana and Cote d' Ivoire which contribute about 60 percent of the world's raw cocoa beans but earn just around $ 5 billion of the global $ 110 billion cocoa market due to low value-addition and poor domestic consumptions.
According to him, the ministry will promote the cocoa consumption “by targeting the young ones at schools. So it will become part of the menu of the school feeding programme and the Free SHS.”
He explained that the move was purely an initiative of the Food and Agriculture Ministry which may not require any Parliamentary approval before commencement.
The Minister observed the need to utilize Ghana's cocoa domestically in order to save the country from falling victim to price volatility on the global market.
Senior Minister, Yaw Osafo Marfo, who chaired the forum, explained that the initiative was a step in the right direction, urging the Agric Ministry to ensure that come September, cocoa drinks are introduced to students.
According to him, the need to improve local consumption of cocoa in Ghana and Cote d' Ivoire – the two largest producers of the beans in the world – was long overdue.
“Consumption is a factor to do with taste,” he said, lamenting that even though Ghana and Cote d' Ivoire produce about two-thirds of world cocoa, they only consume about one percent respectively, asking both nations sarcastically “who should consume the cocoa for you?”
BY Melvin Tarlue
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