🛍️ Ghana: souvenirs
Ghana's craft heritage is regal - kente cloth, Ashanti gold weights, beads and the carving towns of the coast. Here is what travellers bring home from Ghana, where the good versions live, and the export questions worth a look - alongside our 65 written places.
🛒 The classic buys
Kente from Bonwire
The strip-woven royal cloth - handwoven kente costs loom-weeks and looks it; printed 'kente' is fine as fabric, but the loom is the heritage.
Krobo glass beads
Recycled-glass beads fired in the bead towns - strings and bracelets from the Koforidua bead market.
Adinkra symbols
The stamped-cloth tradition of proverbs in symbol - and the symbols carved into everything else.
Ashanti gold-weight replicas
The brass figures once used to weigh gold dust - honest replicas of a museum-grade tradition.
Shea butter and cocoa
Northern shea from women's cooperatives and single-origin Ghana chocolate.
Carved stools and drums
The symbolic Ashanti stool and drum carving from craft villages like Aburi.
⚠️ Check before you buy
- Genuinely old gold weights and regalia are collectors' items with export questions - replicas are sold honestly and cost honestly.
- Handwoven kente prices reflect weeks at the loom - suspicious bargains are prints.
- Wooden items into strict countries (Australia, NZ) face inspection - clean, bark-free carvings pass easier.
✗ Better left behind
- Ivory and leopard anything - banned.
- 'Ancient' Akan gold from beach sellers - brass, and sold with a story.
Markets shift, workshops close and open, and the best souvenir is still the one with a story you were there for. Buy from makers where you can, keep receipts for anything substantial, and when a deal feels too good, it usually is.