How to reduce west Africa’s smuggling problem

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2025

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Consumer goods as well as fuel and cocoa are all crossing Ghana’s northern border illegally, and in large volumes.

It's costing the government billions of dollars in lost revenues.

Ed Butler looks at perhaps the biggest illegal trade - gold - Ghana’s number one cash export.

But even as the informal economy, unmonitored and untaxed, continues to grow, some are asking: isn’t there also a specific economic solution to the problem?

In the second of two programmes, based at the northern Ghanaian border with Burkina Faso, he finds out what some are suggesting could be done to change the criminals’ incentives.

Produced and presented by Ed Butler

(Image: Illegal gold mining in northern Ghana)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Business Daily and welcome to the second of our programs looking at cross-border smuggling in Africa.
0:09.0	Smuggling is going on. Those who are going to buy are waiting across the border.
0:15.6	It's just a price difference that makes people smuggle for it from here.
0:19.9	Today we're back in Ghana,
0:21.7	and we're looking at what the experts reckon
0:24.0	could help to reduce the illegal trade.
0:27.7	Too often we see the answer being posited as almost purely law enforcement,
0:34.1	when really we need to be looking at the economic incentives
0:37.1	for smuggling the price
0:38.8	differentiations, the subsidies, the tax regimes that can offer a slightly more sustainable
0:44.1	approach.
0:45.1	The economics of Africa's smuggling problem.
0:47.7	That's here on Business Daily from the BBC.
0:55.2	So I'm standing in a cattle market in a place called Wally Wally, which is in the northeast of Ghana.
1:06.2	There's some goats ramming each other at one of their feet, dozens of cattle.
1:12.9	The cattle are standing around silently, talking to each other by their feet, dozens of cattle. The cattle are standing around silently talking to each other. Hello. Whilst the guys debate which ones they're going to
1:21.7	buy and trade. They bring them from the headers from the bush.
1:28.4	Once they bring them into the market,
1:31.0	they sell a mid-profit.
1:33.0	They are all into this market.
1:35.2	Ahmed Jalo is with me.
1:36.7	He's a journalist based in this area.
	...

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