I am from the USA. How can I make money in Ghana?

Answer 1

Having just spent some time in Ghana I can assure you that it's very difficult to make money over there. The vast majority of people are employed in subsistence agriculture or are independent traders - usually trading from a street-side shack.

Businesses in the sense that we understand them do not exist - there are no chains of supermarkets, no national car dealerships or anything like that. It would be very difficult and unconventional to sart a business and then to expand it to different branches or to take on lots of employees. This is something you see only in respect of international organisations such as Barclays Bank, Shell Petroleum etc.

Anything internet based is going to prove difficult as there are so few computers linked to the internet (other than at internet cafes) and those that are privately connected are expensive ($360 connection and $90 a month for a very slow and intermittent broadband connection).

One area which is rapidly expanding is mobile (cell) phones but it's only the infrastructure level which is organised on a large scale - the actual selling and servicing of handsets etc is done by individual businesses.

One of the problems is that Ghana is a very poor country and that prices of pretty much all goods are very low (a bottle of Coca Cola is 2,500 cedis - about $0.25 or £0.15) so even if you manage to provide goods or services in large quantities you'll struggle to make much of a profit.

One area where there is potential to make money is in the tourist trade - regular accomodation can be as little as $3 or $4 a night but in the tourist hotels a double air-conditioned suite would be about $100 to $150 a night (for examples see if you can find the Dutch Hotel near Accra or the Hans Cottage Botel in Cape Coast on the internet). The restaurant trade is another possibility, traditional Ghanaian meals are typically around $2 or $3 but a European meal would be more likely to be $8 to $12.

One problem you have other than catering for the tourist trade is the amount of competition. Pretty much all trading is done from the roadside and whatever you want you don't have to go far. With so much competition and so little money it would be nigh on impossible to establish a business that charged high enough prices to be profitable.

Going back to the tourist trade, if you did take this route you'd need suitable premises (a hotel or a restaurant) and unless you buy an existing one outright it's going to take some time to build and get established - construction in Ghana is a very slow process and a restaurant that might be constructed in the west in a few weeks or months is likely going to take a few years. Frequently places are open to the public before construction is completed.

Another possibility would be to get into some government backed scheme. For example, you could train people in IT and be paid by the government for providing the training. Bear in mind that what the Ghanaian Government spends in a year is what the US Government spends in a morning - there's very little money about.

The notion of businessmen and businesswomen as we understand it is not something you'll find in Ghana and the people with money tend to be those who are specialists on one area or another - architects, doctors etc. Even then, they're only rich by Ghanian standards - a Ghanaian doctor will earn in a year what an American doctor would earn in a month or less.

The bottom line is that the potential to make money is very limited, the primary concern over there isn't to become rich but to earn enough to get by. In a country with this mindset you're facing an uphill struggle all the way and that's why my suggestion would be to aim for the tourists - the people who have the money to spend and don't mind paying comparatively high prices to get the service they want. The drawback here is that there are very few tourists so you'd be entering into a very limited market and what tourists there are tend to be centred around Cape Coast, Elmina and Central Accra (Ringway, Ridge, Danquah areas).

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Online Surveys For Money - http://OnlineSurveys.uzaev.com/?Peyd

Answer 4

Try a home business or an online business read some articles and tips on it on this site

Answer 5

sell tupperware

Answer 6

sell lemonade.

Answer 7

find a job and then to work.