Almost everything that leaves an Accra household still works. People move, upgrade, have children, stop having small children, and the fan, the cot, the kettle and the four bags of clothes go into a corner and then, eventually, into a skip.
That is the wasteful ending and it is rarely the intended one. A thing that still works has somewhere better to go, and in a city where most households buy second-hand by choice, finding that somewhere is not hard.
— Waste collection and recycling
Start by sorting into four piles
Everything you are clearing falls into one of four, and they have completely different destinations:
- Works, and someone would want it. Give it away. Most of this guide.
- Works, and is worth real money. Sell it, or give it to someone who needs the money more than you need the convenience.
- Broken but repairable. Accra repairs things that other cities discard, and there is a tradesperson for almost everything.
- Genuinely finished. Dispose of it properly.
The fourth pile is smaller than people think, and treating a larger one as though it belonged there is the mistake this guide exists to prevent.
The platforms
Givny
givny.com is a free community marketplace built for exactly this. You pin your location, photograph the thing, list it, and someone nearby asks for it. Everything on it is free, there are no fees and no advertising, and it takes Ghanaian organisations as well as individuals rather than being a Western platform with a Ghana page bolted on.
Four things make it the right shape for the job:
- Nothing on it is for sale. A free item is not competing for attention with listings from people trying to sell you the same thing.
- It sorts by distance, which is what actually decides whether a wardrobe changes hands.
- The conversation stays in the app until a handover, so you are not giving your phone number to strangers in order to give away a chair.
- Organisations can hold a page, which is the route for an office clear-out, an end-of-term school donation or an NGO that needs specific things.
It is new, and that is the honest caveat. At the time of writing there is very little listed in Accra, so expect to be among the first in your area rather than to find a busy local feed. That makes it more useful for giving than for receiving today — and the only way a platform like this stops being empty is people listing on it.
Facebook and WhatsApp groups
The most active route in Accra today, and worth using alongside anything else. Neighbourhood and estate groups, compound groups, church groups, school parent groups and the large Accra buy-and-sell groups all carry give-away posts.
- Post in the smallest group that covers your area. A residents’ group of three hundred neighbours produces someone at your gate within the hour; a fifty-thousand-member city group produces forty messages and nobody arriving.
- Put the location and the collection times in the post itself. That is the whole negotiation.
- Expect to be asked to deliver. You do not have to.
Jiji and Tonaton
Ghana’s classifieds sites — jiji.com.gh and tonaton.com, now the same company — are free to post on and reach an enormous audience.
They are built for selling, and it shows. A free listing sits among paid-for ones, is found mostly by people who resell, and puts you in a negotiation you did not want. Use them when you would rather sell the thing than give it away, which for anything valuable is a perfectly reasonable choice.
The noticeboard that already exists
Compound houses, offices, gyms, churches and mosques all have one, physical or otherwise. Something offered to people who already know you moves faster than anything posted anywhere.
The direct routes, which are often better
A platform is a way of finding a person. Often you already know the person, and in Accra the direct route is usually both fastest and most useful.
The people who work in and around your home. House help, a security man, a gardener, a caretaker, the woman who sells at the junction. Ask about the specific thing rather than announcing a general clear-out.
Churches and mosques move goods through congregations constantly and know who in the neighbourhood needs what.
Schools take books, stationery, sports equipment, furniture and computers, and a public school near you will take them today. Ask the head teacher rather than leaving things at a gate.
Charity shops run by foundations both distribute goods and fund their own work from the proceeds. Ring before travelling with a car full of things: what they can take varies with what they already have.
Kayayei — the head porters who carry loads at the markets — are among the people in this city with least. Clothing, footwear and household basics given through a market association or a group that works with them reach people who need them.
A word about children’s homes
Giving to an orphanage feels like the most direct good you can do with a box of clothes, and it is the route to be most careful with. Ghana has spent years working to reduce the number of children in residential care, most of whom have living parents, and a reliable flow of donations and visitors is part of what keeps unnecessary homes open.
Prefer organisations that keep children with their families — school support, feeding programmes, community health — over a home you found online, and do not arrange to visit and photograph children as part of giving something away.
By category
Clothes and shoes. The question is not whether your clothes can be used but whether they will be. Accra is the end of the line for the global trade in donated clothing, a large share of which arrives unsellable and is burned or dumped. That is precisely the argument for handing wearable clothes to a person or an organisation directly rather than into a bale.
— Where to buy second-hand clothes — Kantamanto, in the glossary
Furniture and appliances. Heavy, valuable and always wanted. The binding constraint is transport, so say in the listing whether the recipient must collect, and expect them to arrange a pickup or a dispatch rider.
Electronics. Working electronics are wanted by everyone. Wipe them first: a factory reset, and sign out of every account before the thing leaves your hands. A phone given away still signed in is a far bigger problem than a phone thrown away.
— Where to buy electronics cheaply — Online fraud in Ghana
Books. Schools, community libraries and university departments take them. Check a textbook is still on the current syllabus before giving it to a school, because an out-of-date textbook is a burden rather than a gift.
— Books and bookshops in Accra
Baby and children’s things. The highest-turnover category there is: cots, prams, high chairs and clothes are outgrown long before they wear out. Give all of it except car seats and mattresses, whose history you cannot vouch for.
Glasses, crutches and mobility aids. Genuinely wanted and very often thrown away instead. Hospitals, clinics and optical shops can usually say who takes them locally.
What not to give away
Passing on a problem is not a donation, and the line is not subtle:
- Anything broken, unless you say plainly that it is broken and the person wants it for parts.
- Expired or opened medicines. Never. Take them to a pharmacy for disposal. Handing on prescription medicine is dangerous and is not legal. — Pharmacies and medicines
- Expired food, opened toiletries, used cosmetics, used underwear.
- Car seats, cycle helmets and mattresses, whose safety depends on a history you do not know.
- Anything with your data still on it.
- Torn, stained or single shoes. The second-hand trade already receives far more unusable clothing than it can absorb, and adding to it moves your disposal problem onto people with fewer options than you.
If you would not give it to someone you know, it is disposal rather than a gift.
Handing it over safely
The same habits as any other arrangement with someone from the internet:
- Arrange a courier or a dispatch rider where you can. It is often simpler than meeting, and it is entirely normal here.
- Meet in daylight and in a public place, or at your gate rather than inside your home.
- Nobody should ever ask you for money to collect something you are giving away. No “delivery fee” or “clearing fee” paid in advance is ever legitimate, and MoMo makes that scam quick. — Online fraud in Ghana
- Give a landmark rather than your address until you are comfortable.
- You are allowed to change your mind. Giving something away creates no obligation in either direction.
When nothing will take it
Only then is it waste. Informal collectors take metal, plastic, cardboard and electronics for their material value, and separating those out means they are recovered rather than landfilled.
Electronics are the category to be most careful with. Hazardous and electronic waste is regulated under the Environmental Protection Act, 2025 (Act 1124), which consolidated Ghana’s earlier e-waste law and turned the Environmental Protection Agency into the Environmental Protection Authority. Informal e-waste processing in Accra still involves burning cable insulation by hand, with serious consequences for the people doing it and the ground it happens on. Prefer a formal e-waste programme or a manufacturer take-back scheme — and give a working device away rather than scrapping it.
— Waste collection and recycling — Where to shop in Accra — Furnishing a home in Accra