Accraculture & etiquette

Foreigners resident in Ghana for 90 days or more register with the National Identification Authority for a non-citizen Ghana Card, and that card is a requirement for applying for or renewing a residence permit. It is also required for opening a bank account, using mobile money, registering a SIM beyond a short window, and paying tax. Newcomers assume the residence permit is the master document and the card follows from it. The dependency runs the other way, and getting that order wrong stalls everything for weeks.

The Ghana Immigration Service issues them separately: the work permit says you may work, the residence permit says you may live here. Holding one without the other is a real and common problem — an employee whose employer proudly produced a work permit can still be unlawfully resident. Ask which of the two you actually hold, in those words, and check the expiry dates independently because they do not always match.

Visitors can register a SIM on a passport, but that registration is time-limited — around 30 days — after which the SIM is deactivated. To keep a Ghanaian number beyond that you need the non-citizen Ghana Card. People who arrive, buy a SIM, give the number to a bank, a landlord and an employer, and then lose it a month later have a genuinely disruptive week. Start the Ghana Card process in your first fortnight.

Section 25(5) of the Rent Act, 1963 (Act 220), as amended, limits advance rent to six months for tenancies longer than six months and two months for shorter ones, with three months on renewal, and it carries criminal penalties. Landlords in Accra routinely demand one to two years. The Rent Control Department has been enforcing the six-month limit more actively since 2026 and will take a complaint. Knowing the number is what turns a two-year demand into a negotiation rather than a fait accompli.

Power cuts have returned in force. Causes cited during 2026 include a substation fire at Akosombo taking out a large block of cheap generation, plus ageing distribution cables and overloaded transformers. ECG has at times declined to publish a fixed load-shedding timetable, which makes it harder to plan than a scheduled outage would be. Ask about backup power at every viewing, and assume that any building marketed to professionals should have a generator with stated hours.

Ghana's National Pensions Act 2008 requires 18.5% of basic salary in contributions — 13% employer, 5.5% employee — and it applies to foreign workers too. But an expatriate employed in Ghana for a period not exceeding 36 months who can show membership of a social security scheme in another country can apply to the National Pensions Regulatory Authority for exemption. The exemption is not automatic; someone has to apply for it, and if nobody does, the deductions simply happen.