Free Chocolate For SHS Students- Nana Addo

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the president of Ghana, has made a promise to residents of Kumasi that the New Patriotic Party government will soon start a programme to offer every school child a free bar of chocolate daily.

In his speech at the World Cocoa Day celebration, Nana Addo  promised that students from basic to secondary level in Ghanaian schools would be given free chocolate bar or cocoa drinks under the school-feeding programme.

The President explained that as Cocoa is the chief agricultural export of Ghana and the country’s main cash crop and with Ghana being the second largest cocoa exporter in the world aside Ivory Coast, though consumption of cocoa products locally has not been up to the expected level he believes this programme would boost the consumption of cocoa products locally and stated that the provision of the free chocolate to all pupils would be reportedly run alongside the school feeding programme.

“It is for this reason that the Ministry of Agriculture through COCOBOD, the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection through the school feeding programme, and the Ministry of Education through the Ghana Education Service, are to ensure the sustained provision of cocoa beverages and chocolates to school children from primary school to secondary level,” he said.

The Ghana Cocoa Board had earlier appealed to Ghanaians to patronize locally produced cocoa products instead of foreign ones at a media launch of the 2017 Cocoa Day in Kumasi.

Local manufacturing companies who are into the production of cocoa products have reportedly agreed to help government with the programme according to Nana Addo’s statements.

Nana Addo explained that the target for the NPP government was to “provide every Ghanaian student with a bar of chocolate or cocoa beverage each day whilst in school.”

Credit:pulse.com.gh