By Philip Tengzu, GNA
Wa, (UW/R), Aug. 17, GNA – A study on immigrant entrepreneurship has called for coordinated policy reforms to address financial, regulatory, market and institutional barriers confronting West African immigrant entrepreneurs operating in Ghana.
The study, titled “Navigation Strategies of West African Immigrant Entrepreneurs in a Secondary Ghanaian City”, indicated that addressing those challenges required interventions at both national and local levels.
This was contained in a policy brief on the research conducted in the Wa Municipality by Mr Omar Faruq Mahmudul-Hasan, Professor Elijah Yendaw and Professor Moses Naiim Fuseini of the University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (UBIDS).
The study, which was conducted in 2025, focused on immigrant-owned small businesses that had operated in Wa for at least one year.
The study involved 37 participants, comprising 32 immigrant entrepreneurs from Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, and five institutional key informants.
The study found that immigrant entrepreneurs had developed alternative financial, regulatory, market and transnational strategies to navigate constraints in the local business environment.
The brief said limited access to formal banking had compelled some immigrant entrepreneurs to rely on strategies, including supplier-credit systems where goods were supplied on consignment and payment made after sales.
The study found that some Nigerian entrepreneurs pooled their resources to meet the US$1 million Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) investment threshold.
The study further revealed that immigrant entrepreneurs had adopted various strategies to integrate into the local market, including learning local languages and customs, developing personalised relationships with customers and avoiding sectors reserved for Ghanaian citizens.
The brief further indicated that immigrant entrepreneurs engaged specialised agents along the Ghana-Burkina Faso-Niger corridor to manage cross-border logistics.
The brief, therefore, said those strategies demonstrated that immigrant entrepreneurs were not only responding to institutional constraints but also developing mechanisms to navigate and reshape their business environment.
The policy brief, therefore, called for stronger coordination among national regulatory institutions, the local assembly and financial institutions to address those challenges and create an enabling environment for immigrant entrepreneurs to thrive.
It also stressed the need to “reform the national investment and banking rules that exclude immigrant entrepreneurs, coordinate enforcement locally, and recognise the collective strategies entrepreneurs have already built.”
The study also recommended a review of the GIPC’s investment threshold and the introduction of a tiered system for ECOWAS nationals to ensure that investment requirements did not exclude small-scale immigrant traders.
It also called for a re-examination of the Ghana Card requirement for access to banking services, arguing that it contributed to the exclusion of some immigrant entrepreneurs from formal financial services.
The brief also encouraged financial institutions to develop products that recognised alternative forms of collateral and credit histories, including supplier-credit arrangements used by immigrant entrepreneurs.
The study noted that encouraging registered business associations and improving access to appropriate financial products by immigrant entrepreneurs could support the formalisation and financial inclusion of immigrant-owned businesses.
GNA
Edited by Benjamin Mensah
Reporter: Philip Tengzu, GNA
[email protected]