Agrihouse Foundation, an agricultural advocacy agency, in collaboration with the Ghana Poultry Project has organized the maiden edition of the Ghana Chicken Festival.

The Ghana Chicken Festival is an initiative to promote the patronage and consumption of locally produced chicken.

The Ghana Chicken Festival was held on Monday 3rd May, 2021 at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel in Accra. The event provided a platform for industry players in the poultry value chain to interact and advocate for more consumption of locally produced chicken.

“This Chicken Festival will help us a lot as a farmer especially for broiler processers simply because the competition is great. About 95% of chicken consumed in Ghana is imported, whereas, we [Ghanaians] produce only 5.0% which is very bad. So, we need to participate in certain activities to promote what we produce.”

“Statistics show that about 70% of Ghanaians need local chicken but they can’t afford, so if we have festivals like this, it will help us to educate Ghanaians,” Augustine Amankwa, CEO of AMAS farms said.

Founder of Agrihouse Foundation, Alberta Akosa explaining the rationale behind the Ghana Chicken Festival said “at Agrihouse, we look to identify the gaps in the value chain and address them. We contribute to raising awareness and drive interest to the sector.”

“For the past three years, we’ve been working with the Ghana Poultry Project to promote the Eat Ghana Chicken campaign and we thought this is the appropriate time to bring it directly to our homes, to make it more relatable by bringing in advocates to have a fun filled day,” she said. 

Programme Coordinator for Ghana Poultry Project, Asiwome Biekro, said the collaborators intend introducing the festival in other parts of the country and ensure its celebration within a time frame.

“This is the first festival of many to come. We intend to develop this into an annual or quarterly event. We also want to take this across the country so that all regional capitals can benefit from the initiative,” he disclosed.

The event was climaxed by a cooking competition among CEOs and media personalities.

 Kafui Dey, a media practitioner, won the cooking competition. He believes the initiative is a good one to promote the local industry.

“This is the kind of event that will throw more light on the issues. Ghana Poultry has been in the news a long time and it has always had challenges like competition from around the world, but this will actually throw some light on the issues. Also, it is a family event which promotes networking,” he said.