Tetteh Quarshie

Tetteh Quarshie (1843 – 25 December 1892) was a pre-independence Ghanaian agriculturalist and the person directly responsible for the introduction of cocoa crops to Ghana, which today constitute one of the major export crops of the Ghanaian economy. Quarshie traveled to the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko in Equatorial Guinea) in 1870 and returned in 1876 to Ghana in order to introduce the crop. He died on Christmas Day 1892.

Tetteh Quarshie was born in 1842 to a farmer from Teshie known as Mlekubo. His mother was known as Ashong-Fio from Labadi, both hailing from the Ga-Dangme ethnic group. In his teens Tetteh Quarshie became an apprentice in a Basel Mission workshop at Akropong. Due to his hard work he soon became a master blacksmith and was in fact the first blacksmith to be established at Akuapim-Mampong. His hobby was farming.

In 1870, Tetteh Quarshie undertook a voyage to the Spanish colony Fernando Po (now Bioko in Equatorial Guinea). About six years later he returned to Ghana with several cocoa beans (the Amelonado) and made history.

Whether Tetteh Quarshie was actually the first person to introduce cocoa to Ghana was questioned during the administration of Sir Gordon Guggisberg, British Governor of the Gold Coast from 1919 to 1927. The colonial judge Sir William Brandford Griffith (1858-1939) claimed that it was his father, Sir William Brandford Griffith (Governor of the Gold Coast in 1880 and 1885), who deserved the credit. The Basel Missionaries also claimed to have experimented with cocoa beans in Ghana as noted in their diaries. Guggisberg decided to fully investigate the various claims. As noted by D. H. Simpson: "Sir Gordon Guggisberg, who carefully went into the matter, saw (1) that the fact that Government found it necessary many a time to institute inquiries is ipso facto proof that cocoa first found its way into the Gold Coast through a channel rather than Government's, (2) that it was impossible that the Gold Coast Government could have failed to record or to give credit to such a distinguished personage as the late Governor Griffith if he were responsible for the introduction of cocoa into the colony, (3) that it was not likely that such responsible Officers as Mr. Gerald C. Dudgeon, Superintendent of Agriculture, and the late Mr. W. S. D. Tudhope, Director of Agriculture, would report that cocoa was first brought into the Gold Coast by Tetteh Quarshie without exhaustive inquiry having been previously made—a fact which is recognized by the Gold Coast Board of Education who have associated Tetteh Quarshie's name with cocoa."the people of teshie should enjoy from the cocoa

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