Ghana’s informal cross-border trade with its three immediate neighbours namely Togo, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire has reached GH¢ 31 billion between January and September 2025, representing 6 percent of all of Ghana’s trade with the entire world.
This is according to the Ghana Statistical Service’s Informal Cross-Border Trade (ICBT) Survey covering the first three quarters of 2025.
The Survey futher revealed that Ghana’s informal trade with its closest neighbours was 1.5 times the size of formal trade recorded over the same period with informal cross-border trade reaching GH¢ 31 billion against GH¢ 20.1 billion in formal trade with the same three neighbouring countries over the same period.
The survey further revealed a clear gender division in how Ghana’s informal cross-border trade operates with men moving approximately 70 percent of exported goods across Ghana’s borders as against the 60 percent moved by women over the same period .
Speaking on this, Government Statistician, Dr. Alhassan Iddrisu noted that this distinct gender dynamic has direct implications for policy,calling for policies designed to serve and regulate informal cross-border trade to be designed with both men and women in mind.
“Policies that serve this trade must be designed for both,” he stated.
The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) Informal Cross-Border Trade (ICBT) Survey is a landmark national data collection initiative designed to measure and analyze unrecorded commercial activity happening outside formal customs channels along Ghana’s land borders.
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