When the African Continental Free Trade Area began moving from agreement to action in 2021, many small and medium enterprises in Ghana saw a new horizon, access to a single continental market of over 1.4 billion people, and the potential to expand beyond Ghana’s borders.
On paper, the numbers suggest progress: a recent report from Afreximbank puts Ghana among the top-6 African economies in intra-African trade in 2024. Ghana’s exports to other African nations reportedly reached US$4.8 billion that year, and the country accounted for about 6 percent of total intra-African trade.
But behind these headline figures lies a more complex and less optimistic reality for many Ghanaian SMEs. For thousands of smaller firms, AfCFTA’s promise remains largely unfulfilled. Evidence from studies, official trade statistics, and the voices of traders on the ground reveal that structural, financial, and institutional barriers continue to block meaningful continental trade for the majority of small businesses.
A 2024 survey of 250 SMEs across sectors such as manufacturing, agribusiness, textiles, food and beverages, herbal products, tourism, and more, found serious gaps in readiness. While many firms showed capacity for innovation and production, most lacked critical understanding of export requirements under AfCFTA. Over two-thirds of SME owners had at most secondary or diploma-level education. Most did not know about key provisions such as Rules of Origin, export documentation procedures, or how Ghana’s trade policy interfaced with AfCFTA.
One dried-food processor in Kasoa, who tried to export to Sierra Leone, described the experience as discouraging. She said, “The dream sounds beautiful on television, but when you start the paperwork, you realise nobody has prepared you. I was sent from office to office for weeks. By the time I finished, the buyer had moved on.”
The practical consequences of that lack of awareness are stark: a majority of SMEs surveyed had never sought export certificates or completed necessary paperwork. Many lacked trade finance, access to logistics infrastructure, and reliable supply of raw materials or finished products meeting continental standards. As a result, they remained firmly local, with little appetite or ability to export.
Financial constraints are among the most frequently cited impediments. The cost of shipping, packaging, certifications, and warehousing is still far beyond the reach of many small firms. Transport and logistics remain prohibitively expensive, and many SMEs cannot afford the expenses needed for cross-border trade.
For those that try to export, high operating costs in Ghana, including rising utility tariffs, erode competitiveness. The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) has warned that elevated electricity and water bills are undermining local manufacturing’s ability to compete under AfCFTA rules. Many firms say their goods become more expensive than similar products from neighbouring countries.
GUTA has now urged that those implementing AfCFTA must consult traders directly rather than just technocrats. As GUTA’s President, Dr. Joseph Obeng, told a delegation from the Pan‑African Parliament recently: “Ghanaian traders welcome the actualisation of the AfCFTA Agreement and have pledged their support for it. However, we want more consultations to ensure the trade agreement benefits local businesses. As it stands, several barriers threaten Ghana’s competitiveness.”
Infrastructural and logistical bottlenecks remain formidable. Poor or non-existent rail links, bad road networks, inadequate freight facilities, and weak warehousing capacity cause delays and inflate costs. For many SMEs, this renders cross-border trade unprofitable. Experts familiar with the challenges have encouraged small producers dealing in similar goods to collaborate and pool resources, a tacit acknowledgement that individual small businesses often lack the scale or capacity to meet continental logistics demands.
Trade facilitation continues to lag. A recent national survey by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) revealed that informal cross-border trade, mostly small-scale, unrecorded trade across official customs, reached GH¢7.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024, equivalent to about 4.3 percent of total trade.
The Government Statistician, Dr. Alhassan Iddrisu, explained at the launch that these numbers finally give visibility to “thousands of traders and transporters whose activities sustain local economies but have long gone unrecorded.” The prevalence of informal trade underlines how many micro-enterprises and border-community traders are forced to bypass formal procedures simply because the cost, complexity or risk of formal exporting is too high.
This informal trade may sustain livelihoods and border-community economies, but it also exposes the limitations of AfCFTA’s formal trade vision. For many small businesses, including women-owned micro-enterprises and regional border traders, the path to formal export channels remains blocked. Issues such as lack of credit, inadequate packaging standards, poor access to storage or refrigeration, unreliable transport, and unstable cross-border payments all combine to keep them in the informal economy.
Beyond these structural and systemic constraints, governance, institutional capacity, and policy implementation remain weak. Although Ghana’s government has publicly affirmed its commitment to AfCFTA, including support programmes for SMEs under the AfCFTA framework, the uptake among small firms remains low. Without serious interventions to build capacity, infrastructure, and awareness, the dream of continental trade for thousands of Ghanaian small businesses will stay largely symbolic.
So what does this reality mean for ordinary Ghanaian SMEs four years into AfCFTA? First, while Ghana as a country enjoys a growing share of intra-African trade, much of that volume is driven by larger firms, bulk commodities, and formal exporters. For many smaller firms, exporting remains out of reach because of cost, paperwork, lack of export-readiness, and structural constraints.
Second, the systemic and financial challenges mean that AfCFTA’s real benefits remain out of reach for a large segment of the private sector. SMEs that lack access to affordable credit, quality certification, packaging, trade documentation, and logistics end up confined to local or informal markets.
The formal export route remains impractical or unsustainable for them. This deeply rooted exclusion risks deepening inequalities within the private sector, with larger firms benefiting disproportionately while smaller firms, the backbone of Ghana’s economy, remain marginalised.
Third, the resilience of informal trade, while vital for livelihoods, shows that many Ghanaian micro-enterprises and border traders cannot rely on formal systems to survive. Unless substantial reforms and investments are made in trade infrastructure, logistics, financing, capacity building, and awareness, AfCFTA will remain a policy success on paper but a limited reality for many Ghanaians.
Four years after the start of AfCFTA, Ghana has certainly made progress at the national level. But the real test lies in inclusive participation. For AfCFTA to transform Ghana’s economy in a way that benefits small and medium enterprises, more than trade laws are needed. The country must attentively address ground-level obstacles.
That means targeted capacity building, affordable trade finance, infrastructure development, simplified customs processes, and outreach to teach export procedures. Unless that happens, the vision of a truly continental market will continue to be largely aspirational, and many Ghanaian small businesses will stay grounded.
