Ghana will finalize a zero-tariff trade agreement with China by the end of October, President John Dramani Mahama announced from Beijing on Tuesday. It’s being celebrated as an opportunity for Ghanaian exporters, but the uncomfortable truth is that removing tariffs doesn’t address why Ghana struggles to sell anything meaningful to China in the first place.
The announcement came during President Mahama’s visit to Beijing for the Presidential Investment Forum, where he praised China’s decision as “an act of solidarity” that would open new opportunities for Ghanaian exporters, agro-processors, and manufacturers.
The statistics Mahama cited reveal the actual problem more clearly than the optimistic rhetoric acknowledges. Between 2020 and 2024, China’s exports to Ghana rose by nearly 46% while Ghana’s exports to China increased by just over 11%. That’s a massive and growing trade imbalance that zero tariffs won’t magically reverse.
China expanded its market access for African countries under zero-tariff treatment in December 2024 to all least-developed countries with which it maintains diplomatic relations, including Ghana and 32 other African nations, covering 100 percent of their products. Ghana is now finalizing its participation in this broader African initiative.
Here’s the fundamental issue: tariffs aren’t what’s stopping Ghana from exporting more to China. Ghana doesn’t produce at scale the kinds of goods Chinese consumers want to buy or Chinese industries need to purchase. No amount of tariff removal changes that reality.
What does Ghana currently export to China? Primarily raw materials like cocoa beans, timber, and minerals. These commodities already face relatively low tariffs because China needs them for its manufacturing base. The zero-tariff policy might marginally improve margins on these existing exports, but it doesn’t create new export categories.
What China exports to Ghana tells the more instructive story: machinery, electronics, vehicles, textiles, construction materials, consumer goods. These are manufactured products that Ghana either can’t produce domestically or produces at prices and quality levels that can’t compete with Chinese alternatives.
The trade imbalance stems from structural differences in productive capacity, not tariff barriers. China has built manufacturing ecosystems over decades that achieve economies of scale Ghana can’t match. Chinese factories produce millions of units while Ghanaian manufacturers struggle to produce thousands. That cost differential overwhelms any tariff advantage.
Analysis from ODI suggests that while China’s new zero-tariff policy for 53 African nations marks a significant step, addressing non-tariff barriers and improving trade facilitation are crucial for unlocking the policy’s full potential. In other words, tariffs aren’t actually the binding constraint on African exports to China.
Non-tariff barriers matter far more. These include product standards that Ghanaian manufacturers struggle to meet, certification processes that small exporters can’t navigate, logistics costs that make shipping economically unviable for anything except bulk commodities, and lack of market knowledge about what Chinese consumers actually want.
Consider processed cocoa products. Ghana has long aspired to export chocolate and cocoa-based products to China rather than just raw beans. Zero tariffs make this theoretically more attractive, but they don’t solve the real challenges: meeting Chinese food safety standards, establishing distribution networks, building brand recognition, competing with established European and American chocolate brands, or achieving production costs that justify the shipping expenses.
The deeper problem is that this zero-tariff agreement perpetuates rather than challenges Ghana’s position in a colonial-style trade relationship. Ghana exports raw materials, China exports manufactured goods. Removing tariffs on both sides of this equation doesn’t fundamentally alter the dynamic; it may actually reinforce it by making Chinese manufactured goods even more price-competitive against Ghana’s nascent industries.
President Mahama stated that the agreement would enhance Ghana’s competitiveness in the Chinese market, particularly for processed foods, manufactured goods, and other export products. But competitiveness requires more than tariff access; it requires productive capacity, quality standards, marketing capability, and logistics infrastructure that Ghana largely lacks for manufactured exports.
The timing is particularly interesting given ongoing debates about protecting Ghana’s local industries. If zero tariffs apply to Chinese imports as well, domestic manufacturers face even stiffer competition from Chinese goods that already dominate many market segments. How does that square with industrialization objectives that require giving local producers breathing room to develop competitiveness?
There’s also the question of whether this agreement includes safeguards that allow Ghana to protect strategic industries. Most modern trade agreements include provisions for temporary protection of infant industries or responses to import surges that threaten domestic production. Without such mechanisms, zero tariffs could undermine rather than support Ghana’s industrial development.
The announcement comes as trade between China and Africa reached $295 billion in 2024, growing by 6.1% from 2023, with data showing the relationship continues expanding. But that growth primarily reflects China’s increasing exports to Africa, not African manufactured exports gaining traction in Chinese markets.
What Ghana actually needs to improve its China trade balance isn’t tariff removal but industrial policy that builds export capacity in sectors where Ghana could compete. That might include specialized agricultural products, niche manufactured goods, or services where Ghana has genuine advantages. Zero tariffs don’t create those capabilities; they just reduce one barrier among many.
The agreement also raises questions about reciprocity expectations. China is granting zero-tariff access ostensibly as development assistance to least-developed countries. But China’s own industrial strategy has always included protecting domestic industries until they achieved global competitiveness. African countries embracing complete openness while still developing industrial capacity may be repeating historical mistakes that trapped other regions in commodity dependence.
Some analysts suggest the zero-tariff policy primarily serves China’s soft power objectives rather than representing genuine development assistance. Experts have expressed skepticism about the African impact of China’s zero-tariff offer, viewing it as an effort to expand China’s influence in Africa without bringing much benefit to least-developed countries.
That critique may be too cynical. There could be genuine benefits for specific Ghanaian exporters who already have products that meet Chinese market requirements and just needed tariff reduction to become price-competitive. But those cases will likely be exceptions rather than transformative at a macroeconomic level.
The real test of this agreement’s value will come in implementation. If it’s accompanied by technical assistance helping Ghanaian manufacturers meet Chinese standards, logistics support reducing shipping costs, and market development programs connecting Ghanaian exporters with Chinese buyers, it could yield benefits beyond tariff savings. If it’s just tariff removal without addressing other barriers, the impact will be minimal.
President Mahama’s announcement that both countries reached an agreement in principle, with formal signing targeted for the end of October, suggests momentum on the diplomatic level. Whether that diplomatic achievement translates to economic transformation for Ghana depends on factors that have nothing to do with tariffs.
What Ghana needs is not easier access to sell raw materials to China, which already happens, but capacity to produce manufactured goods that Chinese consumers want to buy. That requires investments in industrial infrastructure, skills development, technology transfer, quality control systems, and market development that tariff policy doesn’t provide.
The danger is that celebrating this zero-tariff agreement creates complacency about the hard work actually required to improve Ghana’s trade position. Tariff removal sounds like progress and generates positive headlines. Building competitive manufacturing capacity involves years of difficult policy choices and sustained investment that don’t produce immediate political returns.
For now, Ghana will get its zero-tariff access to the Chinese market. Ghanaian leaders will cite this as evidence of strengthening bilateral relations. A few exporters may benefit marginally from reduced tariff burdens on existing exports. But Ghana’s fundamental trade challenge with China, the massive imbalance between what each country sells to the other, will persist largely unchanged.
Until Ghana develops productive capacity that goes beyond extracting and exporting raw materials, no amount of tariff reduction will transform the relationship into one of equals exchanging manufactured goods. The zero-tariff agreement might be an act of solidarity, as President Mahama described it, but it’s not a development strategy. Ghana still needs to figure out what it’s actually going to produce and sell to China beyond the commodities it already exports.
That’s the conversation Ghana should be having but isn’t. Instead, the focus remains on market access, as if the problem were Chinese barriers preventing Ghanaian products from entering rather than Ghana’s limited capacity to produce exportable manufactured goods at competitive prices and quality levels. Zero tariffs remove one excuse for why Ghana doesn’t export more to China. What they reveal is that the real reasons run much deeper than tariff policy can address.