Markets and trade

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What "trade" really means

Trade is simply swapping what we have for what we need. A country earns foreign money by selling goods abroad (exports) and spends it buying goods from abroad (imports). If we sell more than we buy, we have a trade surplus. If we buy more than we sell, we have a deficit.

That foreign money matters because most of what we import, from fuel to medicine, must be paid for in dollars, euros or yuan, not cedis. Every bar of gold and bag of cocoa we sell helps pay for those things and supports the value of the cedi.

What we sell, and to whom

Gold leads, and a few buyers take most of it

In 2025, Ghana exported goods worth GH¢401.5 billion and imported GH¢253.2 billion, a surplus of GH¢148.3 billion. Exports were higher than imports in every single month of the year.¹ Gold alone earned nearly two thirds of export income; our Economy page breaks down the shares.

Because gold dominates, our biggest customers are the places where gold is refined and traded. According to the Ghana Statistical Service, these were our top five export markets in 2025:²

Together these five took more than two thirds of everything we sold. South Africa was our biggest African customer.² Ghana exported to 163 countries in total, including 51 in Africa, and ran a GH¢34.7 billion surplus with the rest of the continent.¹

What we buy

Fuel, vehicles and machines top the shopping list

Our single biggest import bill is fuel. In 2025, Ghana spent GH¢28.4 billion on imported diesel and GH¢23.2 billion on petrol.¹ Even though Ghana produces crude oil, we still import most of the refined fuel that runs our cars, buses and generators.

By broad category, according to United Nations trade data, the largest import groups in 2025 were:³

Ghana bought from 216 countries in 2025. China was the largest supplier, mainly of machinery, vehicles, iron and steel, plastics and chemicals.¹

Adding value

Selling chocolate, not just cocoa beans

Selling raw materials is like selling the ingredients and letting someone else bake the cake. The real money, and the jobs, are in the baking. That is the thinking behind two big policies.

Non-traditional exports. These are everything other than the old staples of cocoa beans, gold, crude oil and timber. They earned a record US$5.01 billion in 2025, up 30.7%. Processed and semi-processed goods made up 83.5% of that, and cocoa products such as paste, butter and powder were the largest single group. Africa bought 30.4% of these exports, and the leading buyers were the Netherlands, Burkina Faso, the United States, the United Kingdom and Togo.⁴

Process half our cocoa at home. Cabinet has set a target that, from the 2026/27 season, at least 50% of Ghana's cocoa beans must be processed locally. Until now we have processed less than 40%: about 220,000 tonnes a year between 2023 and 2025, against average production of nearly 600,000 tonnes. Installed grinding capacity was estimated at about 504,780 tonnes in 2025.⁵

A single buyer for gold. The Ghana Gold Board, known as GoldBod, was created by the Ghana Gold Board Act, 2025 (Act 1140), which President Mahama signed on 3 April 2025.⁷ GoldBod is now the only body allowed to buy, sell, assay, value and export gold and other precious minerals in Ghana, and it took over the old Precious Minerals Marketing Company. Its stated aims include supporting small-scale miners and fighting gold smuggling.⁶

The gateways

Two seaports carry almost all our goods

Most of Ghana's trade travels by sea through two ports. In 2025 they handled just over 31 million tonnes of cargo: Tema in the east took 64% and Takoradi in the west took 36%.⁹ Imports made up about 18.3 million tonnes and exports about 11.5 million.⁹

Takoradi is our bulk export port. By weight, manganese was Ghana's largest seaborne export in 2025, at about 4.5 million tonnes or 39.7% of export cargo, followed by bauxite and cashew nuts.⁹ Tema is the container port. It handled a record 2,290,531 TEUs in 2025, up 34.6%, and for the first time entered Lloyd's List's ranking of the world's top 100 container ports.⁸

Ghana's ports also serve our landlocked neighbours. In 2025, about 1.26 million tonnes of transit cargo passed through,⁹ and the Transport Minister has named the trade of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger as a prize Ghana must compete for against Lomé and Abidjan.⁸

The rules of the road

ECOWAS and the AfCFTA: trading with Africa on better terms

Two agreements make it cheaper for Ghanaian businesses to sell to other Africans.

ECOWAS. Under the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme, qualifying goods made in West Africa can move between member states without customs duties, provided they meet the rules on where they were made.¹⁶

The AfCFTA. On 10 May 2018, Ghana and Kenya became the first countries to deposit their ratifications of the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement.¹⁴ The AfCFTA's Guided Trade Initiative, which got the first real shipments moving under the new rules, was launched in Accra on 7 October 2022. Ghana was one of the eight countries in its first phase, alongside Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania and Tunisia.¹⁵ Read more about the AfCFTA Secretariat in Accra on our Ghana and the World page.

Markets for money

The stock exchange and the commodity exchange

The Ghana Stock Exchange. Trading began on the floor of the Exchange on 12 November 1990.¹⁰ It is where people buy and sell shares in companies such as MTN Ghana, GCB Bank and Fan Milk. The main index, the GSE Composite Index, closed at 14,000.37 on 6 November 2026, up 59.63% for the year, and the market was worth GH¢263.27 billion.¹¹ That follows a 79.4% gain in 2025, the index's best year since 2004.¹² Kasapreko, the drinks maker, joined the market in June 2026 after selling shares to the public.¹¹

The Ghana Commodity Exchange (GCX). The GCX is a marketplace where farm produce such as maize is graded, stored and sold at transparent prices. It cleared 2,130 tonnes of trades in the first three months of 2026, more than the 1,700 tonnes it handled in the whole of 2025.¹³

Where Ghana shops

Makola, Kejetia and Kantamanto

For most Ghanaians, "the market" means a place, not a statistic. Three are famous.

Makola, Accra. Built in 1924 in the heart of the city, Makola has always been dominated by women traders.¹⁷¹⁸ On 18 August 1979, the military government of the day had the market destroyed, blaming market women for the country's economic troubles.¹⁷ It came back, and today its market queens still manage facilities, enforce rules and support traders in hard times.¹⁸

Kejetia, Kumasi. The Kumasi Central Market, also known as Kejetia, is often described as the largest single market in West Africa, with more than 8,000 stores and stalls. The first phase of its redevelopment, with about 8,420 new stores, was completed in late 2018.¹⁹

Kantamanto, Accra. Ghana's best-known second-hand clothes market has more than 2,000 shops and over 30,000 traders. A fire on 2 January 2025 destroyed a large part of it.²⁰

How we pay

Mobile money keeps it all moving

Walk through any Ghanaian market and you will hear "send it on MoMo". In 2025, mobile money transactions in Ghana were worth GH¢4.54 trillion, up 50.8% from GH¢3.01 trillion in 2024. There were 26.7 million active customers and 491,057 active agents.²¹

Quick recap

Five things to remember

1. SurplusGhana sold GH¢148.3 billion more than it bought in 2025.¹
2. GoldThe UAE, India and Switzerland were our top three customers.²
3. FuelDiesel and petrol are our biggest import bills.¹
4. 50%The target share of cocoa to be processed at home from 2026/27.⁵
5. TemaEntered the world's top 100 container ports in 2025.⁸