What Is the Price of Food in Accra Today?
The Makola basket of 10 everyday staples sits at ₵480 today. Prices move with the cedi and the harvest calendar, and 3 tracked items are in their typically-cheaper months this July.
Makola basket
10 staples tracked
Sampled at
single-market week — comparison returns with the next full refresh
In season now
Tomato, Plantain, Cocoyam
What's cheap right now — July
Items in their typically-cheaper months this July, from the documented crop calendar. Seasonal outlook, not a prediction — the strip rotates as the year turns.
Makola basket over time
8 complete-basket snapshots · earliest 2026-03-19 · weeks with partial sampling are omitted, not summed
Why we track a 10-staple basket in Accra
Every household in Greater Accra buys roughly the same 10 items each week — rice, palm oil, tomato, plantain, yam, onion, eggs, fish, chicken, bread. The combined cost of those 10 items is the basket, anchored at Makola, Accra's central retail market.
We are widening the panel to compare the same basket across Madina, Kaneshie, Agbogbloshie and the other major markets, so each week shows every market that reports the complete basket.
The basket total is the cleanest single number we have for everyday cost of living in Greater Accra — more honest than national CPI because it is sampled at the markets where Accra actually shops, not at the supermarkets where the upper middle class shops.
— accra.cool desk
The 10-item basket
| Item | Unit | At Makola | Cheapest | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rice | 5kg bag | ₵76 | ₵76 | Makola Market |
| Palm oil | 1.5L bottle | ₵60 | ₵60 | Makola Market |
| Eggs | crate of 15 | ₵43 | ₵43 | Makola Market |
| Tomato | 1 kg | ₵26 | ₵26 | Makola Market |
| Onion | 1 kg | ₵21 | ₵21 | Makola Market |
| Plantain | 1 bunch | ₵35 | ₵35 | Makola Market |
| Yam | 1 large tuber | ₵62 | ₵62 | Makola Market |
| Tilapia fish | 1 kg | ₵88 | ₵88 | Makola Market |
| Chicken | 1 kg | ₵52 | ₵52 | Makola Market |
| Bread | 1 loaf | ₵17 | ₵17 | Makola Market |
Every item we track
21 items across 3 categories — open any for its price by market, seasonal outlook and long-run history.
protein
staples
Why tomato leads the basket
Ghana's headline inflation rose to 5.3% year-on-year in June 2026, up from 3.7% in May — the third consecutive monthly increase, though still less than half the 13.7% recorded a year earlier. The nuance matters: month-on-month inflation actually SLOWED to 0.2% from 1.1%, so the pace of price increases is easing even as the annual figure rises. The rise is driven by lagging non-food effects rather than fresh food shocks.
The biggest contributors, per the Ghana Statistical Service, are bus and trotro fares (10.5% of the headline rate — the June GPRTU 20% increase now flowing through the CPI), rents (8.4%), and secondary school fees (7.2%). Food inflation edged up more modestly to 3.9% from 3.3%, with ginger, river fish, cooked rice, tomatoes, and yam the main movers.
Tomato, which spiked earlier in the year, has since retreated into its June–July southern-harvest season as supply improved. Non-food inflation at 6.3% now accounts for 68.5% of the headline number. The takeaway: the disinflation trend since the 2025 peak hasn't reversed, but the transport and housing cost increases of the spring are working through the system with the expected lag.
— accra.cool desk
Why Makola is cheaper than Tema
The same 10 items can cost ₵470 at Agbogbloshie wholesale, ₵521 at Makola retail, and ₵610 at the supermarket strip in East Legon. Three forces drive the spread. First, wholesale-vs-retail: Agbogbloshie sources directly from the Northern, Volta and Eastern Region farms, then breaks bulk for retailers.
Second, distance from the supply chain: markets close to the wholesale terminals (Agbogbloshie, Mallam Atta, Madina) have cheaper produce; markets in the consumption zones (Osu, East Legon, Cantonments) carry a 10–25% premium. Third, demand mix: markets that serve professional buyers (chop bars, hotels) often have negotiated prices that retail walk-ins can't access.
— accra.cool desk
Market comparison
This week's basket is priced at Makola Market only. The side-by-side comparison across markets returns with the next full refresh, when every market is sampled for the same 10-item basket on the same day.
Reading the weekly basket move
Single-week basket moves of under 2% are noise. Anything between 2% and 5% is signal — usually tied to a fuel pricing window or a weather event. Above 5% is a structural shift — currency, government policy, or regional supply chain. The May 2026 weekly moves clustered around 1.5–2.2%, with the big move coming in the monthly aggregate as tomato surged on Burkina Faso supply pressure. Comparing this week's move to the four-week running average tells you whether you're in a noise period or a trend period.
— accra.cool desk
How the cedi shows up in your shopping bill
Roughly 40% of the basket by value is imported or has imported inputs — rice (Vietnamese and Thai), palm oil (Malaysian for the bulk of supply), wheat flour for bread (Turkish and Russian), fertiliser-grown produce (Moroccan urea). When the cedi weakened 4.6% in May, those import-heavy items rose 2.5–4% within four weeks.
The pass-through isn't one-for-one because traders smooth the rise across cycles, but the direction is reliable. A weaker cedi today = a heavier basket bill within a month.
— accra.cool desk
How fuel shows up in your shopping bill
Diesel is the freight cost of moving produce from Volta and Eastern Region farms to Greater Accra markets. When diesel moved past ₵17/L in June 2026, basket prices for produce items (tomato, plantain, yam, onion) ticked up 2–4 percentage points beyond what the cedi alone would have produced. Tomato is the most diesel-sensitive item because the supply chain is the longest. Bread is the least diesel-sensitive because it's baked locally with imported flour — the inputs are dollar-sensitive but the trucking leg is short.
— accra.cool desk
How we sample the basket
Each Tuesday morning, a sampling pass visits Makola, Madina, Kaneshie, Agbogbloshie and three rotating markets. The other 4 markets are sampled Wednesday morning. At each market we price the same 10 items at consumer-scale quantities (5kg rice, 1.5L palm oil, half-crate eggs, etc.) and record the median quote across at least three sellers. Outlier quotes get dropped.
The basket total is computed against the same scale for every market. The Makola figure is the most-cited because Makola is the most-visited general market in Accra; other markets are useful for triangulation.
— accra.cool desk
Common questions
- This week's basket was sampled at Makola Market (₵480 for the 10-item shop). A market-by-market comparison of the cheapest place to shop returns with the next full refresh.
Have a question we should answer? Email hello@accra.cool.
Read next
this week
Price changes this week
Every item move that crossed the 2% noise threshold.
Read →cedi watch
Why food tracks the cedi
40% of the basket has imported inputs. A weaker cedi shows up in your shopping bill within a month.
Read →fuel today
Why food tracks fuel
Diesel is the freight cost of moving produce. Diesel up = produce up within 4 weeks.
Read →