While diplomats and locals alike repeat the mantra “Ghanaians and Nigerians are brothers”, in Accra’s major market centres, this bond of regional brotherhood is severely strained.
The Ghanaian capital’s sprawling Abossey Okai spare parts market, where Ghanaian, Nigerian, and other foreign traders operate inches apart, is now in a state of constant tension. Nigerians – the market’s single largest group of foreign retailers – are finding their businesses systematically locked up by frustrated local trade unions.
The friction is part of a historical pattern of retaliatory policy between the two West African nations. While the 1983 ‘Ghana Must Go’ expulsion from Nigeria is famous, the precedent for mass deportation was set by Ghana more than a decade earlier. In 1969, Ghana invoked the Aliens Compliance Order to remove millions of migrants, mostly Nigerians, citing their dominance in the local economy. This was followed in 1979 by state-led ‘house-cleaning’ exercises that targeted the retail class, effectively shifting much of the trade into the informal sector.
Under the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act 2013, foreign nationals must meet a $1m minimum equity to trade in Ghana. The law also explicitly bars non-citizens and businesses not wholly owned by citizens from participating in the country’s retail sector.
Yet, Nigerians are continuing to do so – and successive governments have struggled to stop them.
Tempting as it is to see the current tensions simply as a case of ‘uncontrolled migration’ and unenforced laws, Nigerian traders have dominated markets in much of Western Africa since the pre-colonial period.
“In the 1930s, a man’s cover cloth made of kejipa cost around 3/- in Nigeria,” writes the anthropologist J.S Eades in Strangers and Traders: Yoruba Migrants, Markets and the State in Northern Ghana. “This could be sold for 5/- in French territory or for 7/- in Ghana. After 1945 the price rose to 7/- in Nigeria and 15/- or more in Ghana.”
The trading communities and commodities traded across the borders of Ghana and Nigeria have changed, but the deep kinship networks supporting this cross-border continue to move goods, capital, resources and know-how far more efficiently than through official channels.
Ghana’s struggles to protect its local industry in the context of the relatively free movement of goods and people across West Africa will sound familiar to policymakers across the world as they struggle to impose outdated national legal frameworks in a world of globalised trade and transport.
The enforcement gap
In theory, Ghana’s imports and customs regime ought to help Ghanaian traders fight off competition from their peers in the rest of the region by forcing their Nigerian counterparts to rely on a grey market of middlemen who offer their services for a fee. But customs clearing agents, speaking to openDemocracy on the condition of anonymity, said the reality is more complex.
Despite Ghana’s long coastline, some of the Nigerian goods in Ghana’s markets reach the continent through ports in neighbouring Benin and Togo, where import fees are lower and are then hustled across the border, the customs agent said. “Then, when the goods reach Ghana Customs, we, the clearing agents, negotiate on their behalf for a lower amount because we know they cannot pay the full duty.”
Each stage in this complicated journey, academic research indicates, is driven by kinship networks between Nigerian traders dispersed across Ghana, Nigeria, Benin and Togo.
So even though the nationality of a trader in Ghana’s spare parts market should not give them any distinct advantage in the price of their goods, a mixture of taxes, travel routes, and informal negotiations favours Nigerian traders.
This difference makes it nearly impossible for the local industry to make as much money. As Benjamin Takyi Addo, spokesperson for the Abossey Okai dealers, told openDemocracy: “With all these dynamics, there is no way you can compete with the Nigerians.”
As a consequence, Ghanaian traders are urging their government to enforce local laws more rigorously.
As in Ghana’s housing market, where residential landlords often prioritise renting to returning diasporans who can afford higher prices, further pricing out locals, retail landlords prefer to rent their shops to the highest-bidding foreign trader, with many valuing their profits over compliance.
Ghanaian trade leaders say that the laws intended to combat this are rendered ineffective by a combination of domestic complicity and weak state enforcement.
One big issue the authorities face in any crackdown is obtaining accurate data on the number of foreign nationals trading spare parts at the market, says Takyi Addo. Some Nigerians register their businesses in their Ghanaian partners’ names, making it difficult to track who actually owns or manages the shops.
“When interministerial task forces from the National Intelligence Bureau, immigration, military, and customs try to close down shops, they get disappointed because the association does not have the accurate data for the government to carry out its mandate and operations,” Takyi Addo told openDemocracy.
Around 96% of Ghana’s retail activity takes place in the informal sector, and state agencies lack a centralised database or “clearer register of foreign players”. Government officials are forced to rely on the traders’ association for information, essentially handing the state’s authority over to those demanding the evictions.
Since the trade law is difficult to enforce without good data, Joseph Obeng, the president of the Ghana Union of Traders’ Association, suggests a more direct solution: focusing on immigration compliance. He argues that while business capital is hard to verify, a trader’s legal status is not. Under Ghanaian law, foreign nationals need work permits tied to a specific employer; they cannot simply set up their own shops without legal documentation.
Obeng also notes that landlords can be punished for renting to traders without proper documents. By targeting these permit violations and the landlords involved, he believes Ghanaian officials can legally clear the markets. This allows them to bypass the messy complications of the investment law.
However, the core weakness in Ghana’s enforcement effort is the political hesitation to pursue prosecution. “The problem is multifaceted and a lack of commitment from the policy makers,” Obeng told openDemocracy.
Although he frequently leads these task forces himself to shut down non-compliant shops, Obeng insists it is not the duty of traders to act as the police. “Theirs is to trade, make money, and support their families, but that has been the case for most GUTA associations because the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act isn’t being enforced.”
This reluctance is often reinforced by diplomatic pressure. Nigerian officials have previously swiftly intervened when Nigerian-owned shops have been shut down by the state’s inter-ministerial task force and GUTA, particularly during major enforcement exercises in recent years.
One of the most notable instances occurred in September 2020, after the extensive closure of Nigerian-owned shops in Accra and Kumasi. The Nigerian government responded by sending a high-level delegation to Ghana on a legislative diplomacy mission led by the then speaker of the Nigerian House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, who met with his Ghanaian counterpart, Alban Bagbin, as well as senior government officials, including the former minister of trade and industry, Alan Kyerematen.
Gbajabiamila’s delegation proposed a bilateral “friendship act” aimed at easing trade frictions between the two states, which faced strong opposition from GUTA. Despite the high-level parliamentary discussions, the proposed bill has stalled and has not been enacted into law.
Benjamin Kwaku Asiam, the national coordinator of the African Continental Free Trade Area’s (AfCFTA) National Coordination Office, an agency under Ghana’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, urged Ghanaian traders “not to engage in forcibly closing shops but rather report misappropriators to the law instead”.
Asiam said his office focuses on achieving a borderless Africa through increased exports and imports, adding that he “condemns the forcible closure of stores” and that only “governmental diplomatic dialogue with GUTA will advance the issue”.
While the AfCFTA encourages the free movement of goods, Asiam said the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre Act was mainly passed to promote international manufacturing and technology transfer, leaving retail as a sector mainly reserved for Ghanaians. He noted that even Nigeria has a prohibitions list for certain business activities by foreign nationals, which he acknowledged “is not ideal under World Trade Organisation protocols”.
openDemocracy contacted the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre 12 times for comment on the ongoing retail-sector disputes, but the centre did not respond.
In August 2025, President John Mahama announced at the Japan-Africa summit that the $1m requirement for foreign companies will be scrapped, much to the opposition of the Ghanaian Union of Traders Association. There is no announced timeline for when this will happen.
“The $1m threshold has been a blunt instrument, a deterrent that discouraged investment without meaningfully safeguarding local traders. Removing it will allow more diverse players into the market, stimulating growth and innovation in retail,” says the Imani Center for Policy and Education, a Ghanaian public policy think tank, in an editorial.
“The structure of retail trade is shifting away from open markets towards digital platforms and organized centers. In this context, GUTA’s insistence on protecting traditional trading turf appears increasingly counterproductive,” the editorial further explained.
The economic pressure
James Peter K’Duah is a Ghanaian auto spare parts retailer who joined his uncle in 2007 to learn the trade, before inheriting the business in 2012. K’Duah’s journey mirrors Ghana's shifting economic fortunes.
He once travelled across the Gulf of Guinea to source his goods, journeying from Accra to Nigeria’s largest trading centre at the Lagos Trade Fair market. But frequent changes in the value of the Ghanaian cedi, which has depreciated by over 88% against the US dollar since 2012, forced him to rely on Nigerian traders who moved in and out of Ghana to supply his goods. He argues that these suppliers have become predatory, selling to him at exorbitant prices while offering cheaper rates to their fellow Nigerians, creating market dynamics that work against local traders.
This creates a perception of unfair competition that threatens local livelihoods, which deepens K’Duah and many other Ghanaian traders’ frustration with their government’s apparent inaction.
“This whole issue of telling the Nigerians to leave has been going on for 15 to 20 years now, yet nothing is being done,” he said. He echoed the wider sentiment of the Abossey Okai Spare Parts Dealers Association and GUTA, who feel compelled to act as frontline enforcers of the law. They believe official measures are ineffective because shop closures are often temporary and foreign traders eventually reopen.
Nigerian traders, on the other hand, deny any wrongdoing. Saint Silvanus left his home in Imo State, Nigeria, for Ghana decades ago in pursuit of better business prospects, and now works for another Nigerian in the Abossey Okai spare parts market.
Silvanus’s business operation highlights the legal grey area exploited by many Nigerian traders, with his shop registered under the name of his boss’s Ghanaian wife. He believes this set-up exempts him from the requirements for foreign trading enterprises to have at least $1m capital, employ at least 20 skilled Ghanaian workers, operate from premises approved by the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre, and maintain valid business permits and tax registrations.
Although he profits from this legal loophole, Silvanus denies that Nigerian suppliers exploit local traders. “When a Nigerian supplier comes to Ghana, they actually sell at a cheaper rate to the Ghanaian because they want to keep them,” he said, claiming that such relationships are built on long-term trust and loyalty.
He says he plays the long game; extending credit to customers, even those who might delay payment or return damaged goods, knowing that in five years, that goodwill translates into reliable, repeat business. This kind of sales strategy is a decades-long, tried and true approach particular to Ibos, of South-East Nigeria; and who over time have proven to be savvy and successful businessmen.
Silvanus’s compliance with shutdowns is therefore strategic. When the Abossey Okai association announced the closure of foreign shops on 8 September, he closed down – although for only a few hours, explaining this was out of “respect and goodwill” rather than legal obligation. He insists he is a principled contributor to Ghana, paying taxes and adhering to local regulations.
While potentially perceived as pricing too low by Ghanaian competitors, this strategy has allowed his business to endure 15 years of temporary closures, which have already forced many of his colleagues to close shop and leave the country for good.
“Ghanaians are hospitable people; that is why we are still allowed to operate here,” he said. Despite his compliments, though, he maintains that disgruntled Ghanaians are simply unwilling to embrace competition in business.
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Esther Owusua Appiah-Fei is a Ghanaian freelance journalist whose work examines inequality, and accountability across Africa, with a particular focus on human rights, women’s sports, labour,and digital governance. She reports on how policy failures and structural exclusion shape everyday life, and her work has been published by the BBC, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle, and TRUE Africa.
