Every district in Greater Accra is a different market. A kenkey stand that sells out by ten in Ashaiman would sit untouched in Shai Osudoku, and a boutique that works in Osu has no customers in Ada West.
This ranks all 29 district assemblies for the trade you have in mind, using real census counts, and shows you every figure that produced the answer.
Business viability checker for Accra districts
Pick a trade and a Greater Accra district, and see how that district ranks for it on the 2021 census figures - footfall, spending power, competition and the cost of premises - with the whole breakdown and a report you can download.
What the score is, and what it is not
It is a ranking. Each measure is turned into the district’s position among all 29 assemblies, and the score is a weighted average of those positions. 80 means this district is near the top of Greater Accra on the things this trade needs. It does not mean an 80% chance of anything.
The weights are our judgement, not data. We think a barbershop needs passing trade more than it needs wealthy neighbours; you may disagree, and the breakdown shows every factor’s contribution so you can argue with the specific number rather than the whole answer.
What no dataset can tell you
Whether four barbers already work that street. Whether the water runs. Whether the landlord will ask for two years up front. Whether the spot is visible from the road. Whether the previous tenant failed there, and why.
Go and stand on the street at the hour you would be trading, and count. This tool is for shortlisting districts before you spend a day doing that, not for replacing it.
Where the figures come from
| Figure | Source |
|---|---|
| Population, age, sex, employment | Ghana Statistical Service, 2021 Population and Housing Census |
| People and premises per km² | Census counts and OpenStreetMap, divided by geoBoundaries areas |
| Major roads per km² | OpenStreetMap |
| Typical rents | A five-way ordinal band, from listing observation |
The rent figure is a band, not an amount. Ghana publishes no rent index at district level, so there are deliberately no cedi figures per district anywhere on this site.
— The map, with every one of these figures
Use it with the map
The map is the other half of this. The checker tells you which districts rank well; the map shows you where they are, which constituencies they hold, and lets you shade all 29 by population, age, employment, informality or rent at once.
A sensible order of work:
- Shortlist here. Three or four districts, not one.
- Shade the map by the measure that matters most to your trade — density for a food stand, rent for a boutique.
- Read the district panel for the constituencies and the landmarks in it.
- Then go and look, at the hour you would trade.
Then work out the money
The score says nothing about whether you can afford it. These do:
— Rent advance calculator — what a landlord will ask for up front, which is the number that stops most people — Loan repayment calculator — VAT calculator — once turnover crosses the threshold — Withholding tax calculator — Import duty calculator — if your stock comes in through Tema
Then do the paperwork
— Registering a business — Entrepreneurship in Accra — Ghana’s regulators, and who to complain to