How to shop in a Ghanaian market

Markets are organised by commodity, not by shop

The thing that makes a Ghanaian market suddenly legible is understanding that it is arranged by what is being sold rather than by who is selling it. Every tomato seller sits with the other tomato sellers. The cloth is all in one quarter, the smoked fish in another, the cooking pots in another, the secondhand shoes in another.

That is why the first impression is one of disorder and the second is not. You are not looking for a particular stall, because there is no particular stall; you are looking for a section, and once you are in it there may be forty people selling almost exactly the same thing at almost exactly the same price. Your job then is to pick someone whose manner you like.

It also explains why asking directions works so well. Nobody can tell you where a shop is, but anyone can tell you where the yam line is or where the beads are, and they will usually walk you part of the way. The market is a map that everybody in it has memorised.

There is no shop to find. There is a section to find.

The corollary is that price comparison is easy and largely pointless within a section. The real variation is between markets, between wholesale and retail, and between what a trader opens with for a stranger and what she settles at.

The markets worth knowing

Makola in central Accra and Kejetia in Kumasi are the two that matter most, and both are working markets supplying the country rather than attractions built for visitors. Neither has an entrance, a map or a gift shop, and both reward an hour of wandering more than a plan.

The Makola trade spreads across the streets around Kojo Thompson Road and Rawlings Park in Accra Central, and it long ago stopped respecting its own boundaries — the trading runs down the pavements, along the roads and into the surrounding blocks. It sells everything: food, cloth, hardware, cosmetics, plastics, electronics. It is loud, hot, crowded, and it is where Accra actually shops.

Kejetia in Kumasi is the largest market in the country and has been substantially rebuilt as a modern structure, which makes it easier to navigate and, to some visitors, less atmospheric than it was. The Adum shopping district sits beside it, and the Centre for National Culture in Kumasi is a calmer place to buy crafts if the market is too much.

Then there are the specialists. Kantamanto, next to Makola, is the enormous secondhand clothing market — the trade Ghanaians call obroni wawu — and is an education in where the world's discarded clothes end up. Agbogbloshie handles yams and onions at scale. The Timber Market nearby sells herbs, barks and traditional medicines. Madina Market on the north side of Accra is large, less central and considerably easier to move around. Takoradi has Market Circle, and Bolgatanga is where the straw baskets come from.

What things are sold by

Most things in a Ghanaian market are sold by traditional measure rather than by weight, and the measure is the container itself. Once you know the common ones you stop feeling lost at the point of buying.

The olonka is the workhorse — a metal bowl used to measure grains, rice, beans, gari and groundnuts, sold by the olonka or by fractions of it. Fish comes by the pan. Shea butter comes by the basin or in a rolled ball. Tomatoes, garden eggs and peppers are heaped into small bowls or piles, and you buy the pile rather than a weight. Yams go by the tuber, and traders sell by the hundred to buyers who are reselling.

Cloth is the one visitors most need to understand. Wax print is sold by the piece: six yards is a half piece, which is the standard length for a woman's kaba and slit, and twelve yards is a full piece. Ask for six yards and you will be understood immediately. Asking for a metre of fabric will produce a confused conversation and, often, a worse price.

None of this is negotiable in the sense that the measure is the measure. What is negotiable is what a bowl or a piece costs, which is the next section's problem. And be aware that a heap for a regular customer and a heap for a stranger are not always identical, which is one of several reasons to go with someone local if you can.

How bargaining actually works

Bargaining in Ghana is a brief, polite exchange over unpriced goods, not a theatrical performance, and doing it aggressively marks you out as someone who has misunderstood the culture rather than someone driving a hard deal. Two or three rounds and it is done.

Greet first. This is not a tactic, it is the basic courtesy of the place, and a trader who has been greeted before being interrogated about price behaves differently. Then ask what something costs, and if the answer is higher than you expected, say so plainly and name a figure you would pay. She will come down some way, you will come up some way, and you will meet or you will not.

Where you have leverage is in being willing to walk. Because the market is organised by commodity, the woman thirty feet away has the same baskets, and both of you know it. Walking away without irritation is a legitimate move and is often answered before you have gone far. Walking away theatrically is not.

Know what is not negotiable. Packaged goods with printed prices, supermarkets, pharmacies, fuel, and increasingly restaurant food are fixed. Transport fares are established rather than haggled — a tro-tro fare is a fare. Trying to bargain in these settings is simply a category error.

Two phrases are worth carrying. In Twi, sɛn? means how much, and the common request to reduce a price is to ask the trader to do you well. Using them badly is fine; the attempt itself changes the temperature of the conversation. In Accra you will also hear Ga, and in Tamale Dagbani, and the same principle applies.

Paying, and the small-notes problem

Carry small denominations, because the single most common friction at a market stall is a trader unable to change a large note early in the day. It stops a transaction cold, and it is your problem rather than hers.

Break big notes wherever you legitimately can — a fuel station, a supermarket, a pharmacy — and keep the small ones separate from the rest of your money so you are not opening a full wallet in a crowd. Have roughly what you expect to spend accessible and the rest somewhere else entirely.

Mobile money is now accepted by a great many traders, including in the big markets, and paying from an MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash or AT Money wallet solves the change problem outright. Visitors can register a wallet with a passport at an operator's outlet, and it is worth doing in the first day or two if you will be buying regularly.

Cards are essentially useless in a market. Some larger shops in Osu, Accra Mall and Adum take them; a stall does not, and will not. Plan on cash and mobile money and treat a card as something for hotels and fuel stations.

Count your change before you move off, without making a performance of it. It is normal behaviour and nobody will take offence.

Buying cloth properly

Wax print cloth is the single best thing to buy in a Ghanaian market, and buying it by the piece and having something made is both cheaper and better than buying anything ready-made. The cloth sections at Makola and Kejetia are enormous and the range is far wider than anything sold to visitors.

Quality varies more than the patterns suggest. Established Ghanaian and Dutch wax brands — the names are printed along the selvedge — cost more and hold their colour and hand through years of washing. Cheaper imported prints look identical on the roll and fade, stiffen or run. Ask what a piece is, feel the weight, and look at the reverse: on a genuine wax print the pattern penetrates the cloth rather than sitting on the surface.

Then find a seamstress or tailor. Six yards will make a substantial outfit, and Ghanaian tailoring is quick and inexpensive by most visitors' standards. Allow real time for it — a few days at least, with a fitting — which means buying cloth at the start of a trip rather than the end. This is where people get caught out, and an unfinished garment collected in a hurry on the way to Kotoka is a familiar disappointment.

Our guide to kente and Ghanaian textiles goes deeper into how the different cloths are made and what distinguishes them.

Kente and adinkra at source

If kente matters to you, buy it in the weaving villages outside Kumasi rather than from a stall in Accra, because you will see it being made, you will get a better price and you will be certain of what you are buying. Bonwire is the best known, with Adanwomase nearby, both a modest drive from Kumasi.

Kente is woven in narrow strips on a loom and then sewn edge to edge into a cloth, which is why the pattern runs in bands. Hand-woven strip kente in silk or cotton is expensive, takes a long time to produce, and feels entirely different from the machine-printed imitation sold as kente in markets and airports. Both exist and both have their uses; you should simply know which you are paying for.

At Ntonso, in the same area, adinkra cloth is stamped by hand using dye made from badie tree bark and carved calabash stamps, each symbol carrying a proverb. Visitors are usually invited to stamp a piece themselves, which produces a better souvenir than anything bought finished. Ahwiaa, also nearby, is the woodcarving village.

These villages are a half-day circuit from Kumasi and are far more interesting than the equivalent time spent in a craft shop. Expect a guiding arrangement at each and agree it before you begin.

What is worth buying beyond souvenirs

The things worth the weight in your luggage are the ones Ghanaians actually use, not the carved masks and painted drums that exist for visitors. Most of them are cheap, all of them are better here than anywhere else, and several are genuinely hard to find abroad.

• Unrefined shea butter, bought by the basin or the ball in the north or from the shea sections of the big markets. Yellow or ivory, smelling nutty rather than perfumed.
• Black soap — alata samina — made with plantain and cocoa pod ash. Sold in soft dark blocks, not the packaged versions sold abroad.
• Bolga baskets, best bought in Bolgatanga but available in Accra, woven from split elephant grass.
• Glass beads from the Krobo area around Odumase and Somanya, made by melting recycled glass in clay moulds. The Koforidua bead market is the place to buy at scale.
• Cocoa and chocolate, including Ghanaian-made bars, and cocoa powder that is not a blend of anything.
• Spices and staples — dawadawa, grains of paradise, dried pepper, shito in sealed jars, gari, and good groundnut paste.

Some of these travel better than others. Shito and groundnut paste need to be properly sealed and are safer in checked luggage. Shea butter melts and should be double-bagged. Check what your own country permits on food imports before you fill a suitcase, because rules on plant and animal products differ and are enforced. Our guide to Ghanaian food covers what these ingredients are actually used for once you get them home.

Heat, crowds and keeping your things

A big Ghanaian market is physically demanding, and going at the wrong time of day is the most common self-inflicted problem. Get there early — from around seven in the morning is ideal — when it is cooler, the produce is fresh and the lanes are passable. By the middle of the afternoon Makola in particular is heat, bodies and noise.

Dress for it. Closed shoes, because the ground is uneven and often wet, and you will be stepping over drains, produce and the odd sleeping dog. Light clothing that covers your shoulders. A hat. Water, which you can buy anywhere as a sachet or a bottle.

On security: pickpocketing in dense markets is opportunistic rather than violent. Keep your phone out of your back pocket and out of your hand, carry a bag that closes and wear it in front, and keep the bulk of your money separate from your spending money. Nothing about this should make you anxious; it is the same advice as for any crowded market anywhere.

Photography needs care. Traders are working and many object, particularly women who do not want their stall photographed by a stranger. Ask, accept a no, and consider buying something from the person you want to photograph — that changes the exchange completely.

You will also see kayayei, the head porters, mostly young women from the north who carry loads through the market on basins on their heads. They are paid per load by whoever hires them, and if one carries your shopping, pay her properly and directly.

Manners that make the day go better

Greeting people before anything else is the single most useful habit in a Ghanaian market, and skipping it is the fastest way to be treated as a cash machine rather than a customer. A good morning and a moment of acknowledgement before you ask about price changes the entire tone of the transaction.

Use your right hand to give and receive money and goods. Using the left is read as rude, and while nobody will lecture a visitor about it, getting it right is noticed. If you are in a group, let one person do the buying rather than three people negotiating simultaneously over the same basket.

Do not treat photographs, questions and long conversations as free when you are not buying anything. Traders are at work and time spent with you is time not spent selling. If somebody has patiently shown you eight different cloths, buy one or thank her properly and move on.

Finally, accept that you will occasionally overpay. It happens to everybody, including Ghanaians shopping outside their own neighbourhood, and the amounts involved are usually small. Getting visibly annoyed about it costs more in goodwill than it saves in cedis. If you want the market experience without the deep end, Madina or the Centre for National Culture in Accra are gentler introductions — a route our three-day Accra itinerary builds in deliberately.

Shopping with someone who knows the sections

Markets are the part of a Ghana trip where a local companion changes the experience most, which is why Ghana Travel & Tour builds market time into itineraries with a guide who knows which section sells what and what a fair figure looks like on the day. We also arrange the dull but necessary parts — a vehicle and driver who will wait rather than circling Accra Central, a stop at a tailor early enough for the work to be finished, and a plan for getting purchases home.

You can see the routes on our tours page. Quotes are itemised line by line and come from a named trip manager you can reach directly, so nothing about the day is a surprise.

Questions people ask