District assemblies across Ghana can make markets safer and financially secure if insurance and risk management are integrated from the start, Solomon Amah-Kai Lartey, President of The Chartered Insurance Institute of Ghana (CIIG), said. He emphasized that insurance works best when markets are planned with proper infrastructure, clear demarcations, and risk management measures.
Mr. Lartey said the first step is to involve insurers and risk managers during market planning to ensure that the layouts meet underwriting standards and can be insured reliably. “First of all, getting insurers or risk managers involved in the planning process…when we are planning markets, there should be a risk management side of it, which should include insurance. So it’s the insurance people who will help you do the demarcations, the firewalls, the access routes,” he told The High Street Journal.
For new markets, he recommended incorporating firewalls between stalls, clearly demarcated trading spaces, and accessible routes for emergency services. These measures, he said, would make insurance feasible and markets safer for traders.
Existing markets, he added, can adopt microinsurance solutions, allowing traders to insure individual wares or structures while assemblies work with consultants to establish standardized, market-wide insurance policies. “Insurance companies have devised ways of providing some microinsurance solutions…so the market women themselves are insuring their wares with insurance companies and some are also insuring their structures,” Mr. Lartey said.
He also suggested graduated premiums to make insurance affordable for small-scale traders, stressing that these solutions encourage orderly operations, faster emergency response, and long-term market sustainability. “Once there’s a fire, you are almost 99% sure that insurance companies will pay because the things that are required for underwriting or for your risk to become standard have been done,” he added.
Mr. Lartey linked the need for these measures to persistent risks in unplanned markets, where narrow alleys, poorly demarcated stalls, and the mixing of flammable goods with other products increase the likelihood of fire and other accidents.
“If you visit our markets today, there are no access routes. So everything is likely to burn down…Most of the time, they are not properly demarcated. So everybody is selling everything anywhere,” he said, highlighting why insurers are often reluctant to cover such markets.
By combining careful planning, risk management, and integrated insurance, district assemblies can turn markets into safe, orderly, and sustainable trading hubs, Mr. Lartey said. He added that Ghanaian markets can thrive, but only if insurance and safety measures are embedded in both new developments and ongoing operations.
