Togo’s two year experiment with a permanent mall selling only local goods is drawing interest in Ghana, where campaigns to buy local remain scattered and short lived.
Togo Mall opened in Lomé in November 2023, inaugurated by then Prime Minister Victoire Tomégah-Dogbé inside the Centre des Expositions et Foires de Lomé (CETEF). Billed as the country’s first retail space devoted entirely to Made in Togo products, it stocks food, clothing, handicrafts and household appliances, and unlike the temporary fairs before it, stays open all year.
The timing was deliberate. The mall launched just after Togo’s fourth Month of Local Consumption, converting an annual campaign into permanent shelf space. By gathering processors, artisans and textile makers under one roof, the model aims to cut distribution costs, lift packaging standards and give domestic goods a fighting chance against imports, advocates of such hubs argue.
Ghana’s version of the idea looks very different. Campaigns such as Wear Ghana and Eat Ghana win regular endorsements from officials, yet the goods themselves sit in scattered gift shops, boutique shelves in upscale Accra districts and occasional pop up markets. Without a single, state anchored destination, shoppers must hunt for local options while makers pay steep rents for space in conventional malls.
That fragmentation, some analysts contend, is why appeals to buy local rarely move the needle. A permanent, well run outlet would aggregate small and medium enterprises (SMEs), turn consumer spending into factory orders and rural income, and make buying Ghanaian easy rather than effortful, they say. The suggestion is that the Ministry of Trade, Agribusiness and Industry could anchor such a venture on state land or through a public private partnership.
The blueprint is not risk free. State backed retail ventures can falter without steady funding, professional management and real demand, and a poorly run showroom could end up subsidising goods that struggle to sell. Togo’s mall has yet to publish detailed performance figures, so its long term commercial success remains to be proven.
Even so, the contrast is instructive. Togo chose to institutionalise local consumption rather than merely promote it. Whether Ghana follows, supporters say, will shape how far its Made in Ghana drive can move beyond slogans.
