Ghana Export Promotion Authority to step up campaign for Ghanaian chocolates

Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) is to step up the promotion of Ghanaian Chocolates in a move to harness the untapped potential of the industry.

GEPA has identified chocolates and the entire processed cocoa value chain as one of the priority products in the National Export Development Strategy (NEDS).

Dr Afua Asabea Asare, the Chief Executive Officer of GEPA, said the key objective was 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.

Dr Asare was speaking at the prestigious Wines of South Africa Road Show Tasting events to promote Ghana’s growing Chocolate industry.

She said GEPA saw the collaboration with the organisers of the wine tasting event as strategic because it created a good platform to promote the country’s premium chocolates which compare very well with those from the traditional chocolates producing countries in the West.

Accordingly, GEPA has supported the industry to participate in various roadshow events in Lagos and Accra on the 14th and 16th of July 2022 respectively.

To maximize these efforts, GEPA 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 organised and supported the industry to participate in Salon du Chocolat in Paris. On the sidelines of the fair, GEPA organised a trade and investment fair in Paris to further promote our chocolate industry to investors.

“And we thought that another way of growing this industry is bundling it up with what South Africa has, especially looking at the vision that we have for the Africa continental free trade agreements. We thought that we should be trading amongst ourselves,” Dr Asare said.

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 its low capacity to process cocoa into chocolates and other higher-value cocoa products.

In a bid to bridge this gap, the government plans to spend roughly $200 million on improving Ghana’s cocoa processing capabilities shortly.

The country’s Non-Traditional Exports earnings increased from $2.847 billion in 2020 to $3.33 billion in 2021, representing a 17 per cent jump due to the high performance of cocoa butter, natural rubber sheets, cocoa powder, refined palm olein, and aluminium plates, sheets and coils.