The Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, in collaboration with the Cocoa Processing Company (CPC), on Tuesday celebrated this year’s National Chocolate Day with students of the Christ Faith Foster Home School at Frafraha in Accra.
The day, which is marked yearly, was instituted to coincide with and reshape the celebration of Valentine’s Day to promote the consumption of chocolate and other cocoa products since cocoa is the mainstay of Ghana’s economy.
This year’s celebration was on the theme: “Love Chocolate, Love Adventure”.
Nana Oduro Kwarteng, the Chief Director of the Ministry, said the day was to increase the consumption of chocolate because it is not just for the taste of it but has a lot of compounds in terms of medicinal purposes”. He said cocoa was an important product and the ministry wanted to ensure that it was used to promote domestic tourism.
“In order to reap the necessary benefit of cocoa, it is advisable for all to add the consumption of the cocoa products to our daily meal,” he said. Dr Frank Asante, the Managing Director of CPC, said the National Chocolate Day was instituted to promote Ghanaian chocolate as the preferred choice of gift for loved ones. He said the company chose to spend the day with the school in order for the students to know the essence of the day as well as know the importance of the consumption of chocolate on regular basis. He said the black chocolate was always better and chocolate eaten before meal was better, adding; “it should not be chewed but licked”.
The CPC later donated cocoa products including bags of chocolate drinks, buckets of tiger-nut, chocolate spread and chocolate worth GHȼ2,000.00. It also presented a vending machine to the school. Madam Ellen Ohene-Bekoe, the Director of the Home, expressed appreciation to the Ministry as well as CPC for the kind gesture and the love shown to the children on the special day.
She called on other corporate organisations to support the school and spend time with the children.
