Ghana’s Latest Imports: Sorkodua, oranges, plantain et al

You may be familiar with the country of origin of your shirts, shoes, slippers, cooking utensils and your television sets but not the country of origin of your daily companion like the chewing stick (Sorkodua).

Sorkodua, that tiny piece of stick which serves either as a supplement or replacement for your toothpaste and toothbrush is now imported from Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia. In fact, plans are far advanced to venture into Guinea to import more Sorkodua to meet the ever growing demands of the local chewing stick.

Most of Ghana’s daily consumables such as oranges, onions, tomatoes, plantains, waakye leaves tooth picks and cotton buds are all imported from countries like China, Egypt, Niger, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea.

Just about five years ago, Sorkodua was harvested locally in some forests located in the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and the Western regions.

An Executive of the Nsorkodua Co-Operative Producers and Marketing Society located at Galaway, off the Hanson Road, Agbogbloshie, told the Scandal in an exclusive interview last Thursday that: “local sorkodua are too tiny for consumption. Moreover, the Forestry Commission and Wildlife would not permit us to fell the trees”.

According to the Executive, the process of transporting sorkodua form “Liberia, through Ivory Coast to Elubo is cumbersome, but we must survive and cater for our families”.

“We pay huge taxes at the borders, but numerous appeals to the Ghana government to reduce the taxes at the Elubo border has not been heeded to”, she added. According to her because of difficulties they encounter in transportation the sorkodua from Liberia to Accra, most of them get rotten or ‘over dried’ before reaching the final destination.

She disclosed that, the association had been operating at its present location since 1988.

It is not difficult to process the Sorkodua into the final state where it can be sold in the open market for its usage.

Hacksaws are used to cut the logs into manageable sizes after which sharp machetes are used to cut them into smaller pieces. The business is dominated by women with the few men involved seeing to loading and offloading of the logs and.

Most of the women who spoke to the Scandal indicated that they had been in the business for at least two decades and that the importation of Sorkodua has had a telling effect on their returns.

The importation of goods and consumables such as oranges, onion, plantain, toothpick and needles has become so pervasive that the Kumasi Metropolitan Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Kojo Bonsu, only last week called for a ban on the importation of toothpick into the country.

He said the local manufacturing industry should be helped to undertake ventures such as toothpick production for which the country had the raw material base to boost its economic development.

The ban, he said, would encourage the local industry to generate revenue and create employment for the people.

He observed that Ghana was endowed with natural resources, especially bamboo trees, which could be used to bring more revenue to the country.

Most of the tomatoes you see in makola market in Accra are from Burkina Faso. Our onions are from Niger. Plantains from Côte d’Ivoire and Oranges from Egypt. Some of these countries are near desert conditions and yet they are the ones that are now feeding Ghana.

Readers would recall that Scandal published on this page a couple of weeks ago that foreign oranges were being imported into the country from Egypt.

Ironically, while a single foreign orange goes for GH¢1.50Gp, a basket load of local oranges sell in the market at GH¢2.00

These oranges can be found in most supermarkets in the capital and are being hawked in the streets. They have been sighted in Kumasi, Tamale, and other regions in the country, rendering our local oranges practically invisible on the market.

The Plant Quarantine Department of the Ministry Of Food and Agriculture (MOFA) grants permits for the importation of these oranges into the country while Ghanaian farmers are still recording huge losses because there are not enough marketing avenues to absorb all the oranges harvested every season.

It is also on record that Ghana has been importing needles from Shanghai for more than half a century, and there seem to be no end in sight to that practice!