Tema and Takoradi: Ghana's Ports by the Numbers

Tema is where nearly everything in a container enters Ghana. In 2024 it moved 1,668,688 TEU against Takoradi's 32,558, which is about 98% of national container traffic, and it has held more than 95% of that traffic consistently. On tonnage, Tema handled 18 million tonnes of cargo in 2023 to Takoradi's 8 million. The port was named Best Port in Container Traffic (TEU) for 2024 at the African Ports Awards.

National container flow has roughly doubled in a decade, from 793,737 TEU in 2014 to 1,701,246 TEU in 2024, the highest in ten years. If you are importing goods rather than bulk commodities, you are almost certainly clearing at Tema, and the practical consequences are congestion, terminal handling charges and demurrage if your paperwork is slow.

Takoradi is Ghana's oldest commercial port, commissioned in 1928, and it plays a different role. It is the country's bulk port and, since the offshore oil discoveries of 2007, the main logistics support base for oil and gas operations, with the fields sitting roughly 70 nautical miles offshore. Offshore supply vessels went from about 11% of the port's calls in 2007 to an annual average of around 60% through the 2010s. It won Best Port in Import and Export Traffic Growth and Volumes, Bulk, for 2023 to 2024.

Takoradi is also the shorter route to the north. It sits about 230km west of Accra and is positioned as a cost-effective corridor to central and northern Ghana and on to the landlocked Sahel markets of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

Choose the port by cargo type, not by distance. Containerised consumer goods, vehicles and general cargo go through Tema, which has the container infrastructure, the shipping-line calls and the clearing-agent density. Bulk commodities, project cargo and anything serving the oil and gas sector are better matched to Takoradi, which is also the more sensible entry point for cargo heading north.

Whichever port you use, the clearance itself is the same: a declaration through the Customs Division's ICUMS platform, an assessment based on the HS code and valuation, payment at a participating bank, then examination and release. The charges that surprise people are rarely the duty. They are the terminal handling, the safe-bond rent while the container sits, and the demurrage that accrues when a declaration is held up.