GTDC on the offensive with Foodfest
The current crop of management at the Ghana Tourist Development Company (GTDC) is an ambitious collection of go-getters.
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They are treading where generations before it, including some of the industry’s most creative minds, dared not and have set their sights on what have, for over three decades, been hard to accomplish.
Their ambition goes beyond setting a Ghanaian dish on the dinning tables of foreign visitors to this country.
Their dream is that on every street or lane or avenue in the rest of the world, there will be a signpost or directional sign advertising a restaurant noted for “Ghanaian Dishes”.
This desire is not written on paper: it burns in the hearts of the GTDC team and is the motivation that is driving the latest tourism event in the country, Foodfest, a two-day fiesta of food, drinks, hiplife, highlife, reggae and plain fun, live, at the Efua Sutherland Children’s Park on May 1 and May 2.
Designed to attract the patronage of the Ghanaian working population, Foodfest has been strategically positioned to unfold as Ghanaian workers in Accra close from the May Day rallies. In subsequent years, there will be a Foodfest in the regions.
Within days of its launch in Accra, Foodfest 2015 has attracted some 120 restaurants and chop bars which have registered to participate.
At the end of the day, only about 50 eateries will be given the green light to mount their stand this year.
This number may go up slightly, but the GTDC management insists that “we are trying to feature restaurants and chop bars with best practices. Specifically, our preference is for those that major in Ghanaian dishes.”
Speaker after speaker at the launch kept referring to Foodfest as an Atta Mills baby. It is not Prof Mills (RIP). At the head of the current GTDC team is Samuel Atta Mills, who, everybody knows, by now, as the younger brother of our late President.
With over 25 years experience in America’s hospitality industry, he thinks that it is not beyond Ghana to place its food on the dinning tables of the world.
For now, the dream is for the day when the average middle- class Ghanaian will call, first for stuff like ‘Ekuegbemi’, Tom Brown, Hausa Koko before he thinks of corn flakes for breakfast.
• The writer is a communication specialist in tourism