February 14, a day known worldwide as Valentine’s Day, or Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is a day for lovers, family, and friends to celebrate love.
Many on this day anticipate spending quality time with their loved ones by going on romantic dates, gifting them special tokens of love, asking out their potential love interest, and many more.
It originated as a Western Christian feast day honouring one or two early saints named Valentinus, and recognised as a significant cultural, religious, and commercial celebration of romance and romantic love in many regions around the world.
It is characterised by the wearing of red clothes by celebrants.
Ghana, over the years, celebrated the day as Valantine’s Day, however in 2005, the country instituted the National Chocolate Day to coincide with the Day, to promote the consumption of Made-in-Ghana chocolate and cocoa products.
This is to position cocoa and the chocolate experience as a strong element of the Ghana tourism experience, promote domestic tourism and give a healthy orientation to the celebration of Valentine’s Day in Ghana.
Also, it aims at creating awareness for Ghanaians to appreciate the health benefits of chocolate, and to promote Ghana as the ‘home’ of chocolate.
The celebration is usually spearheaded by the Ghana Tourism Authority under the auspices of the Ministry of Tourism Arts and Culture in collaboration with Cocoa Processing Company, Ghana Cocoa Board and the Cocoa Producing Companies.
The inception of the National Chocolate Day has increased local patronage of chocolate and cocoa products, offered employment opportunities to numerous artisanal chocolatiers, cocoa-based products processing entrepreneurs, and minimised social vices associated with the celebration of Valentine’s Day, amongst others.
In 2022, it was reformed to a full week’s celebration dubbed: “National Chocolate Week”, with various activities, including presentation of chocolate to institutions, family day out, poetry shows, health walk, and movie premiers among others.
The 2024 edition, scheduled from February 9 to 14 is on the theme: “Eat chocolate, stay healthy, grow Ghana” and sub-themed: “Explore Ghana, eat chocolate”.
Ahead of the celebration, the Ghana News Agency, spoke to some traders on the patronage of chocolate products and paraphernalia.
Madam Esther Bonsu, a trader, said patronage was low this year ahead of the celebration but was hopeful more people would come in to buy today.
She attributed the low patronage to the drastic increase in the price of chocolate products and urged authorities to reduce the prices for the ordinary Ghanaians to be able to buy.
Madam Afia Obenewaa, also a trader at Tema Station, told the GNA that patronage was very low because of the current hardship in the country.
“Since morning, I have only been able to sell two bars of small chocolate at GHc 5.00 each, which is not encouraging, because we also depend on this as our source of livelihood, so if people don’t buy, we cannot meet our needs.”
Some activities scheduled for the celebration include a visitation to the Chief Imam, the Central and Cantonments Mosques, as well as a health walk from the Accra Tourist Information Center to the Chocolate City at Tetteh Quarshie Roundabout.