Is Ghana Safe for Expats — What the Road Toll and the Crime Numbers Show
GHANA · SAFETY
Ask is Ghana safe and the honest answer changes with the road, the region and the hour of the day.
Key facts
What this is — Ghana is a coastal country in West Africa, and Accra on the Atlantic is its capital.
The biggest risk — Ghana’s road authority counted 2,949 road deaths in 2025, against 552 murder cases police recorded in 2024.
What governments say — The United States rates Ghana level two of four, and Britain warns only about the Bawku area.
The catch — Ghana’s police have not published a full national crime series for 2025, so comparisons rest on older counts.
Where it is tense — Bawku, a town on the Burkina Faso border, has held a night curfew from 10 until 5.
Which way it moves — Ghana’s Global Peace Index rank fell from 61st in 2025 to 76th in 2026.
Ghana’s National Road Safety Authority counted 2,949 road deaths in 2025, the highest toll in 35 years. Anyone weighing a move types the same three words into a search box: is Ghana safe.
The risk that arrives every morning
The danger most newcomers underrate sits in the first ten minutes of the day. It is the drive to work.
The National Road Safety Authority recorded 14,743 crashes and 2,949 deaths in 2025. For 2024 it recorded 13,489 crashes and 2,494 deaths.
The police Motor Traffic and Transport Department published the same 2025 totals in March 2026. BusinessGhana reported it as the highest death toll on Ghana’s roads in 35 years.
Between January and August 2025 the authority counted 1,937 people killed and 10,957 injured. Police recorded 552 murder cases in all of 2024, which the roads outnumber more than four times over.
A resident controls part of that exposure. Daytime travel between cities, a seat belt and a sober driver move the odds further than any choice of neighbourhood.
What a level two advisory is measuring
The American travel advisory for Ghana sits at Level 2, Exercise Increased Caution, dated 7 July 2026. It names crime, poor health infrastructure, violence against women and violence against gay and lesbian travellers.
The same advisory asks Americans to reconsider travel to the northern border areas. It lists the Upper East, North East and Upper West regions, plus land west of the N12 highway in Savannah.
Britain’s Foreign Office draws a narrower line. It advises against all but essential travel to the Bawku Municipal area in the Upper East Region.
That page was updated on 2 July 2026 and still carried the warning in mid-September. Canada asks for a high degree of caution nationwide, and advises against travel within 25 kilometres of Burkina Faso.
Australia’s Smartraveller names towns rather than regions: Bawku, Garu, Zebilla, Tempane, Nalerigu and Walewale. Four governments, four maps, and none of them grades a street.
An advisory is written for a whole country by a foreign ministry, on its own review cycle. It moves slowly in both directions, and it lags the ground it describes.
Bawku, and the line a curfew draws
Bawku sits in Ghana’s far north-east, at the border with Burkina Faso. A curfew has held there from 10 at night until 5 in the morning.
The Interior Ministry renewed that curfew in January, in March and again in April 2026. On 24 August it eased the ban on motorbike riding and kept the curfew in place.
President John Mahama told chiefs in February 2026 that about 119 people died during the years of mediation. The Ghana News Agency carried the figure on 10 February 2026.
He announced a GH₵1 billion fund to rebuild the district (about US$88 million). The dispute behind the curfew is a chieftaincy conflict between local communities, not a campaign against outsiders.
Accra lies far south of all this, on the Atlantic coast. Most foreign residents live in the southern third of the country, and the curfew never reaches their week.
In Accra, the crime takes the phone
The crime a resident of Accra is most likely to meet costs a handset, not a life. Snatching at car windows and in crowded markets is the standard complaint.
National counts are harder to pin down. Ghana’s police have not published a full public crime series for 2025.
In November 2025 the member of parliament Mohammed-Mubarak Muntaka read police figures aloud in the house. GhanaWeb reported his numbers: 1,219 robbery cases and 552 murder cases in 2024.
For the first half of 2025 he cited 628 armed robbery cases and 340 murders. Those remain the freshest national counts on the public record.
Regional commands publish their own, and they look different. The Foundation for Security and Development in Africa reported 13 robbery cases in the Western Region for all of 2024.
That report came in March 2025 and praised the regional command. One region of sixteen is not a country, and the gap between the two numbers is the point.
One index, and the way it moved
One measure does try to summarise a whole country at once. The Global Peace Index, published by the Institute for Economics and Peace, scores states on conflict, militarisation and societal safety.
In the 2025 edition Ghana scored 1.898 and ranked 61st in the world. The National Peace Council, quoted by BusinessGhana in May 2026, placed the country seventh in sub-Saharan Africa.
The 2026 edition moved Ghana to 76th. Dubawa Ghana, a fact-checking outlet, reported in June 2026 that the country had slipped to around tenth in Africa.
That is the direction worth watching, and it points downward. It is also a national aggregate, weighted by items a resident never touches, such as military spending.
A rank cannot tell a newcomer whether to walk home from a bar in Osu. It can tell them which way the ground is tilting under the whole country.
Where the money actually goes missing
The losses foreign residents record most often are financial. Ghana’s Cyber Security Authority put cyber fraud losses at GH₵14.9 million for the first half of 2025 (about US$1.3 million).
GhanaWeb reported that figure in September 2025. A later count put the first nine months above GH₵19 million (about US$1.7 million).
Investment scams grew fastest of all. APA News reported 149 online investment fraud cases from January to August 2024, worth GH₵1.99 million (about US$174,000).
The same authority had logged 63 such cases in 2023, worth GH₵421,621 (about US$37,000). Reported losses are always a floor, because the unreported ones never enter a table.
Mobile money sits underneath most of it. A caller who claims to work for a network and asks for a code is the standard opening move.
Every dollar figure here uses 11.43 cedis to the dollar, the open exchange-rate reading on 16 September 2026.
Safety for women, stated and unstated
The American advisory names violence against women among its reasons for the caution level. Ghana’s police run a Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit, known as DOVVSU, across the regions.
The unit takes reports and refers cases onward. It has not put out a current national case series that a newcomer could read before deciding anything.
So the picture gets assembled from advisories and from habit. The habits that recur concern transport after dark rather than districts.
A ride-hailing app supplies a named driver and a tracked route. A car flagged down on a street at midnight supplies neither.
Nothing in any of the four advisories says Ghana is closed to women. They say which hours and which arrangements carry the weight.
Who answers when you dial
Ghana folded its emergency lines into a single number, 112, in January 2020. Modern Ghana reported at the time that 191 for police and 193 for ambulances would stop working.
They did not stop being printed. Local guides published in late 2025 and through 2026 still list 191 and 193 alongside 112.
The National Ambulance Service answers on 112 and keeps at least one station in each of Ghana’s 261 districts. News Ghana reported in March 2026 that the fleet had reached 356 ambulances and 3,473 technicians.
The same report carried the other half of the sentence. The service was ordering 400 new ambulances while older vehicles already stood broken down.
An ambulance that exists in a district is not the same as an ambulance that arrives. Distance, traffic and the state of the nearest vehicle decide the difference.
Malaria counts as a safety question
The health risk that never takes a season off is malaria. The American CDC records year-round transmission across the entire country, Accra, Kumasi, Tamale and Cape Coast included.
City addresses are where that assumption usually breaks. Prevention is a nightly habit rather than a single purchase at the pharmacy.
Britain’s Foreign Office updated its Ghana health page on 20 May 2026. It asks travellers to check that their destination can provide the healthcare they may need.
The same page asks for insurance covering local treatment and unexpected medical evacuation. Evacuation cover is the quiet clause in that sentence, and the expensive one to be without.
Specialist care concentrates in Accra and Kumasi. A serious injury in a northern district becomes a transport problem before it becomes a medical one.
Where Ghana sits on the scale
Put the pieces on one scale and Ghana does not land at either end. It sits where a stable state with thin emergency services usually sits.
The movement matters more than the position. The peace score fell between 2025 and 2026, and the road toll rose across the same two years.
Other lines moved the other way in the same months. The motorbike ban in Bawku eased, and a rebuilding fund was announced for the district that had been closed at night.
The police keep their 2025 national totals inside the service, and a member of parliament read the last public ones aloud. The road authority publishes a country figure and no regional table beside it.
A person who drives less after dark, banks carefully and carries evacuation cover has answered most of the question. The rest is a map, and most of that map is quiet.
More: Africa news in English
Sources: Ghana National Road Safety Authority, Motor Traffic and Transport Department of the Ghana Police Service, BusinessGhana, UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, US Department of State, Global Affairs Canada, Australian Smartraveller, Ghana Ministry of the Interior, Ghana News Agency, GhanaWeb, Foundation for Security and Development in Africa, Institute for Economics and Peace, Dubawa Ghana, Ghana Cyber Security Authority, APA News, Modern Ghana, National Ambulance Service, News Ghana, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/ghana and https://travel.state.gov/en/international-travel/travel-advisories/ghana.html and http://www.businessghana.com/site/news/General/342279/Road-crashes-killed-2-949-in-Ghana-in-2025-the-highest-in-35-years-Road-Safety-Authority and https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/Over-628-robberies-340-gun-related-murders-recorded-Muntaka-details-2009982 and https://www.citinewsroom.com/2026/02/119-killed-in-bawku-conflict-during-otumfuo-led-mediation-mahama/ and https://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/business/GH-15-million-lost-to-cyberfraud-in-first-half-2025-1999883 and https://www.newsghana.com.gh/ghana-plans-400-new-ambulances-but-old-ones-are-already-broken-down/ and https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/ghana/health and https://nas.gov.gh/contact.php
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