Building or renovating in Accra means buying materials yourself far more often than in places where a contractor supplies everything. That is normal here, and it is where both the savings and the losses are.
Where to buy what
The Timber Market, on Hansen Road in Accra, is the city’s centre for timber and construction supplies - boards, roofing members, doors, and the hardware that goes with them.
Hardware shops cluster along the main roads of every suburb, and sell cement, nails, pipes, fittings, paint, tools and everything a small job needs. They are the default for anything you can carry.
Cement is sold everywhere - hardware shops, roadside depots, and direct from distributors for whole-truck quantities. The price per bag falls with the quantity, and for anything beyond a small repair, the depot beats the corner shop.
Tile, sanitaryware and fittings showrooms sit along the arterial roads and in the industrial areas. Prices and quality vary enormously, and so does what is actually in stock.
China Mall and the discount stores are for tools, fittings, and the small consumables of a job, at prices that reflect the quality.
Buy by the right quantity
This is where money is made and lost:
- Cement by the bag is the expensive way. By the pallet or the truck is the cheap way, if you have somewhere dry to keep it.
- Sand, stone and chippings are sold by the tipper load, and the price is mostly haulage. The nearer the source, the cheaper the load.
- Timber is sold by the piece, at nominal sizes that are not what a tape measure says. Measure a sample.
- Paint by the gallon or the bucket costs far less per litre than by the tin.
Work out quantities before you go. A materials list from whoever is doing the work, in writing, is the difference between buying once and buying three times.
The ways money disappears
Buying in somebody else’s name. If a workman buys your materials, you pay their price plus their margin, and you never see the real one. Buy yourself, or agree the supplier and the price in advance.
Over-ordering. Leftover cement goes hard, leftover paint is never quite the same colour again, and leftover materials on a site walk.
Under-ordering. A second delivery of sand costs another haulage fee, and a second batch of tiles may not match the first. Buy tiles, paint and anything batched in one go, with a margin for breakage.
Storage. Cement absorbs moisture and is ruined by a rainy night. Timber warps. Anything valuable left on an unsecured site is gone by morning.
Materials on site without a watchman is the most expensive saving in Ghanaian construction.
Checking what you are handed
- Cement: check the bag is intact, dry and not hard at the corners, and look at the date. Old cement loses strength.
- Timber: sight down the length for warp, and check for insect holes and soft spots.
- Roofing sheets: gauge matters more than the coating. Ask for the gauge, not “the thick one”.
- Pipes and fittings: cheap plastic fittings fail behind a wall, which is the most expensive place for anything to fail.
- Standards marking on manufactured goods is what the GSA exists for, and its absence on something structural is a reason to buy elsewhere.
Delivery
Most suppliers deliver, and the charge is negotiable on a large order.
- Agree who unloads, and whether that is included.
- Check the load before the truck leaves. Counting roofing sheets after the driver has gone is not counting.
- Access matters. A tipper truck cannot reach every compound, and transferring a load by wheelbarrow costs a day.
Before any of this
If you are building rather than repairing, the materials are the easy part. The permits, the title and the land itself are where the real risk is.
— Buying land in Ghana — Land law and conveyancing — Housing and land scams — Finding a tradesperson