Recognizing the untapped potential of Ghana’ Chocolate industry, the Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) has collaborated with organizers of the prestigious Wines of South Africa on a Road Show Tasting event to promote Ghana’s growing chocolate industry.
According to GEPA, it sees the collaboration as strategic since it will create a good platform to promote Ghana’s premium chocolates which compare very well with that of others from the West.
Accordingly, GEPA supported the industry to participate in its road show events in Lagos and Accra on the 14th and 16th of July 2022 respectively.
To maximize these efforts, GEPA says it is also preparing the participation of the industry in the main event in South Africa later in the year as well as participate in the 2022 Salon du Chocolat Fair in Paris.
In 2021, GEPA organized and supported the industry to participate in Salon du Chocolat in Paris.
On the sidelines of the fair, GEPA organized a trade and investment fair in Paris to further promote Ghana’s chocolate industry to investors.
Ghana’s Cocoa is widely accepted as a very premium product in the global cocoa value chain industry, supplying roughly, a quarter of the world’s cocoa beans, a critical input in the nearly $140 billion global chocolate industry.
However, Ghana gets little from the chocolate billions because of low capacity to process its cocoa into chocolates and other higher-value cocoa product.
In a bid to bridge the gap, President Akufo-Addo, recently made it a top priority for Ghana to extract more value from the cocoa it produces.
“We intend to process more and more of our cocoa in our country with the aim of producing more chocolate ourselves. To that end, the Ghanaian government plans to spend roughly $200 million on improving Ghana’s cocoa processing capabilities in the near future"
As the national trade organization responsible for the development and promotion of Ghana’s exports, GEPA has identified chocolates and the entire processed cocoa value chain as one of the priority products in the National Export Development Strategy (NEDS).
The key objective is to transform Ghana’s traditional raw commodities based economy into a competitive export-led industrialized economy with a robust manufacturing base.
To this end, GEPA is earnestly working with domestic chocolate-making and exporting companies in Ghana, including artisanal companies as well as large exporting companies.
It is emerging that there are about three large chocolate exporting companies in Ghana viz, Cocoa Processing Company, Niche Cocoa and Fair Afric Ghana.
The artisanal sector is also fast growing with over 30 companies producing innovative brands and tastes majority of whom are members of the newly-formed association, the Cocoa Value Addition Artisans Association of Ghana (COVAAAGh).
GEPA is working to strengthen this association to position them scale up their production and marketing.
Speaking to the media, the Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) said "We want to grow the chocolate industry in Ghana. We have been working with Cocoa Making Association of Ghana, we want to grow their chocolate industry"
She added that since of the chocolate producers have small cottage industry, she believes exposures of these sort is another way of growing this industry.
Dr. Asare believes this will help Ghana chocolate industry bundle up with what South Africa has.
"Looking at the vision we have for the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (afcfta) agreement, we thought that we should be trading among ourselves" she also mentioned
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Gharbin Foods underscored the need for Ghana to push its chocolate to the international market for more patronage.
He thanked GEPA for the exposure and also called for more of such events.
The South African High Commissioner To Ghana, Her Excellency, Grace Jeanet Mason said "July Month is when we commemorate Late Nelson Mandela in South Africa and tonight, we are celebrating Late Nelson Mandela with and also enjoying Ghanaian chocolate.
"We are collaborating and strengthening the Ghana-South Africa relations" she concluded.
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Story by: Joshua Kwabena Smith