Tetteh Quarshie

Quarshie travelled 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.

In 1870, Tetteh Quarshie undertook a voyage to the Spanish colony Fernando Po (now Bioko in Equatorial Guinea).

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.

As noted by D. H. Simpson:[3] "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.

However, Ghana's cocoa is still of the highest quality and the country earns hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the export of the beans and processed materials.

His friend, Sir Gordon Guggisberg, set up the Tetteh Quarshie Memorial Scholarship at Achimota College.

According to the late Ghanaian lawyer and anthropologist Dr. Isaac Ephson:[4] "This took the form of a more enduring memorial, which was set up at Achimota in honour of the pioneer of Ghana's staple crop and the principal bulwark of the country's economy.