Informal street food caterers, popularly known as chop bars, are a key feature of Ghanaian city life. They offer the urban poor the cheapest food.
A 2016 survey by the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated there were about 3,300 chop bars in the capital, Accra, employing almost 4,300 workers. This figure is likely to be much higher now due to rapid urban growth in the last decade. Ghana’s urban population increased from 50.9% in 2010 to 56.7% in 2021. By the same year the Greater Accra region was home to 91.7% of the urban population in the country.
Street food caterers in Accra face a number of problems, including insecurity of land tenure, inadequate knowledge of food hygiene, harassment from local authorities, cut-throat competition, and low returns from work.
