My country Ghana and Cocoa, I'll explain the relationship.
Well, still sharing about my uncle's farm. Besides the old mill, they were drying some Cocoa. You're not going to go to our big farms and not find Cocoa trust me.
There's a confusion and I'll explain it so you don't misunderstand the whole thing. Cocoa from Ghana is not famous, rather, Ghana is famous for being one of the world's major producers of cocoa. Cocoa from Ghana, like cocoa from other parts of Africa and we cannot ignore Coite d'Ivoire in this topic, is usually of lower flavor grade and used primarily for mass consumption chocolates and industrial uses, not for higher value, specialty chocolate products.
History tells us that the Dutch missionaries planted cocoa in the coastal areas of the then Gold Coast (that's what GHANA was called during that time and it was because of the gold we had) as early as 1815, while in 1857 Basel missionaries also planted cocoa at Aburi.
However these were not the main events that led to the spread of cocoa cultivation. It was Tetteh Quarshie, a native of Osu, Accra, who had travelled to Fernando Po and worked there as a blacksmith. He returned in 1879 with Amelonado cocoa pods and established a farm at Akwapim Mampong in the Eastern Region. The farmers there bought pods from his farm to plant and cultivation spread from the Akwapim area to other parts of the Eastern Region.
Ghana is the second leading producer of cocoa in the entire world. The cocoa from Ghana is known and valued for its quality and because of this, most countries into cocoa products manufacturing prefer Ghanaian cocoa to the others. Not saying the others are bad though but this is one of the things that makes Ghana famous.
So on the world market, we are not famous for the production of chocolate, which cocoa is a major ingredient of but living here my whole life and having to taste the difference, it's fair to say the chocolate from Ghana is very delicious and nutritious. Perhaps my tongue is used to my local food but I'm just being honest.
One reason for the richness of Ghana chocolate is because the cocoa content is higher than those produced in Europe and other continents. Elsewhere, artificial ingredients are added to the cocoa and that's going to always affect the quality of the chocolate.
A whole hospital is named after Tetteh Quarshie, at Mampong, Akwapim in the Eastern Region. Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Hospital was built in honor of him introducing the plant into Ghana, the then Gold Coast, which was the name until it was changed to Ghana after gaining Independence in 1957 from the British.
Cocoa has been the largest foreign exchange earner though our vountry abounds in Oil and some Metalic Minerals like Gold, Diamond and Manganese.
That tray of cocoa looks good enough to dive into 😁
I have always known Ghana grew a lot of cocoa, but here in the UK we see plenty of specialty chocolate from Java, Madagascar etc, just never Ghana. I'm sure it is just as high quality, it just needs someone with a marketing head to find a way to describe something in the flavour that's unique. When multinational corporations buy from farmers, they'll downplay the quality to hammer them on price. If the farmers can sell direct to specialty chocolatiers it cuts out the middle-man, with an end product that is good enough to sell for a better price, with far more going to the farmer in a fair win-win scenario.
Oh yes you're absolutely right and, we're good with both growing the Cocoa and making the chocolate infact for Valentine's Day, most people prefer buying the chocolate we made here not because of supporting our own products but just because of the richness of the chocolate, natural processing
When people hear Ghana, one thing that comes to mind is cocoa. And it’s interesting how as a Ghanaian, I didn’t even know of most of the things you’ve shared. Thank you f
😂😂😂 thanks to history class and too much talking to my grandma 😂