What buying shares in Ghana costs, and how to choose a stockbroker

Updated 26 September 2026. This piece first said that nobody publishes what a share trade costs. The Ghana Stock Exchange does: its Trading Rules set the range every broker must charge within. The piece now starts there. It also counted twenty-four brokers, where the exchange lists twenty-three: two names in its monthly reports belong to one firm.

To buy a share on the Ghana Stock Exchange you go through a licensed dealing member. There are twenty-three of them, and the first thing to know is what a trade will cost.

What a trade costs

Rule 66 of the exchange's Trading Rules sets it in two parts:

Buyer and seller each pay. So buying shares and later selling them costs 3% to 5% of the amount before any gain. On GH₵5,000 that is GH₵75 to GH₵125 to buy, and about the same again to sell.

Two things follow. Shares suit money you can leave invested for years, because a few percent of costs matter less the longer you hold. And the commission is negotiable, so ask a broker where in the range you will pay before you open an account, particularly if you are investing a larger sum. The exact figure appears on your contract note, which the rules require within one business day of the trade.

What the brokers publish themselves

Where in that range each firm charges is for you to ask: we checked every broker's website in August 2026 and their documents in September, and none of those we could read states its own rate. One publishes a minimum to open an account; three describe their rates as "competitive". Any firm that sends us its rates will have them on its card, cited and dated.

Reaching them

In August 2026, six brokers' websites did not load:

All six hold current SEC broker-dealer licences, and their telephone numbers and email addresses are on the regulator's register. A website that does not load says little about the firm behind it: a company may have moved without the register being updated, a domain may have lapsed, or a site may be down or blocked to automated requests. If you want one of these firms, telephone them.

We checked every website on the register again in September, searched for any firm whose registered address failed, and wrote to every licensed broker-dealer. Five entries on this site were corrected from what that turned up, and the details we could not use have been raised with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sarpong Capital Markets is marked because the exchange's reports show it appearing in seven monthly reports and trading nothing in any of them.

Who actually does the business

The exchange publishes each member's share of value traded every month. Across the eighteen reports we held when this was written, from February 2025 to July 2026 (the exchange's reports from 2017 onward are now in the archive):

The top three handle about 77% of the value traded between them.

But read the range rather than the average. IC Securities' share, month by month, went 68%, 49%, 67%, 69%, 42%, 20%, 66%, 45%, 33%, 23%, 57%, 77%, 50%, 64%, 45%, 72%, 51%, 79%.

That is a fifty-nine point swing with no direction. It is not a firm consolidating power — it means a handful of large trades decide who leads in any given month, which is a fact about how thin the exchange is rather than about any broker's position.

Value and volume point different ways

One signal in the data gets close to what a smaller investor wants to know: whether a firm does small business.

In July 2026, IC Securities handled 78.82% of the value traded but 62.16% of the volume — fewer, larger trades. Databank handled 3.32% of value and 7.77% of volume: more trades, smaller ones.

If you are starting with a few thousand cedis, ask each firm whether it takes accounts of your size. The volume figures suggest where the smaller trades go, and they point the opposite way to the value ranking.

One thing worth knowing before you choose

Ghanaian brokers do not specialise. The exchange's monthly reports name no market makers and no sponsoring broker for any listing, so any of the twenty-three can buy any listed share, and the NewGold ETF.

There is no need to find the right firm for a particular company. Choose on where in the commission range they will charge you, whether they want retail business, and how easily you can open an account.

We have asked

Every one of them has been sent the same questions: what you charge to buy and sell, any minimum to open an account, what you deal in, whether you take retail clients, and how an account is opened.

Anything that comes back will be published beside the firm's name, cited and dated, at no cost to them.

See all 23 brokers and how to reach them