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From ‘face the wall’ to ‘white fufu’ …Folklore board, GTA to rebrand local dishes
A group picture of the participants
The National Folklore Board (NFB) in collaboration with the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) is set to rename some Ghanaian local foods associated with derogatory names to enhance their appeal to both foreign and local consumers.
Prof. Gabriel Eshun, Technical Advisor of the Ghana Tourism Development Project indicated that the move was a strategy to change the narrative and boost the tourism subsectors of the country.
He disclosed this to The Spectator on the sidelines of a workshop on tourism, arts and culture for selected Journalists towards the tourism promotion agenda in the country.
He said it was wrong for local healthy foods such as konkonte, a meal prepared with cassava flour to be called ‘face the wall’ or ‘Chris Brown’, and ‘Kofi broke man’ for roasted plantain among others, saying that as a nation, it was important to be innovative and creative when it came to names given to local foods.
According to him, such derogatory names connote poverty and must not be allowed to persist, explaining that, all manner of people including the rich and affluent in society enjoy eating such foods.
The board he said, would soon come up with suitable names for local dishes, disclosing for example that, konkonte could be renamed as ‘white fufu’.
The training was the second in a series by the Ministry for Tourism, Arts and Culture to build capacity and encourage the media to give much attention to the promotion of the tourism subsectors of Ghana.
The journalists were selected from Bono, Bono
East, and Ahafo regions, representing the middle zone of the country.
They updated their knowledge on issues such as who a tourist is, what goes into tourism data, revenue landscape as well as better telling the tourism story among others.
The tourism ministry is aiming to generate $6 billion from 1.2 million tourism visitors annually.
The ministry sought to create more employment, for which various innovative and creative strategies were being developed to boost the sector.
From Daniel Dzirasah, Kumasi