What Is the Price of Food in Accra Today?
The Makola basket of 10 staples sits at ₵521 today — up 7.0% over five weeks, tracking the cedi slide and Burkina Faso supply disruption. Tomato leads everything at +38.8% MoM.
Makola basket
10 staples tracked
Cheapest market
₵521 for the same shop
Priciest market
₵521 for the same shop
Biggest mover
+38.8% MoM
Makola basket over time
8 weekly snapshots · earliest 2026-03-19
Why we track 10 staples across 11 markets
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. We sample prices at 11 markets (Makola, Madina, Kaneshie, Agbogbloshie, Tema, Kasoa, 31st December, Mallam Atta, Osu, Dome, Nungua) every Tuesday and Wednesday. 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's 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 | ₵90 | ₵90 | Makola Market |
| Palm oil | 1.5L bottle | ₵60 | ₵60 | Makola Market |
| Eggs | crate of 15 | ₵43 | ₵43 | Makola Market |
| Tomato | 1 kg | ₵53 | ₵53 | 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 |
Why tomato leads the basket
Tomato is the single most volatile item we track. When tomato moves 38.8% in a month — as it did in May 2026 — the rest of the basket moves 2 to 3%. Two reasons. First, almost all of Accra's tomato comes from Volta Region farms and from cross-border supply via Burkina Faso. The May 2026 surge was driven by Burkina Faso regional instability disrupting the supply chain, on top of the Volta dry-season gap. Any rain disruption, fuel-price spike on the trucking route, or border-closure event prices through within 72 hours. Second, tomato has no good substitute in Ghanaian cooking — you can swap palm oil for groundnut oil, swap maize for rice, but you can't make jollof without tomato. That inelastic demand combined with concentrated supply makes tomato Accra's most reliable inflation leading indicator. Watch tomato; everything else follows.
— 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
The same basket across 11 markets
Same 10 items, same scale, same sampling week. Cheapest market wins primarily on supply-chain proximity.
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
- Makola Market has the cheapest total basket at ₵521 — typically a wholesale-leaning market where produce arrives directly from the supply farms. Makola is the central retail benchmark at ₵521.
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 →