Invisible Engines of the Market: The Contribution of Kayayei (Female Head Porters) to Ghana’s Urban Economy
In Ghana’s bustling markets, the kayayei (female head porters) carry the literal weight of commerce. Moving goods from wholesalers to retailers and consumers, they provide low-cost urban logistics that keep markets functioning. Yet their indispensable labor remains invisible in official economic accounts and policy debates. Without them, Ghana’s marketplaces would falter.
The term kayayei, from "kaya" (goods) in Hausa and "yoo or yei" (woman/women) in Ga language, reveals how gender structures their role. Most of these women are migrants from the northern part of Ghana, pushed by poverty and limited opportunities into precarious urban labor. While the informal economy is undervalued, it sustains national growth (Chen, 2012). Kayayei not only enhance market efficiency but also send remittances to rural households, embedding their earnings in Ghana’s broader economy (Opare, 2003). With the informal sector accounting for over 80% of employment in Ghana, their contribution is undeniable, even if rendered invisible.
Yet this visibility in labor is matched by invisibility in rights. Kayayei often work long hours under dangerous conditions for meager pay. A 2018 study reported that many earn as little as 5–20 Ghana cedis (less than $2 USD) per day, despite carrying loads that can weigh over 50 kilograms (Osei-Boateng & Ampratwum, 2011). Their sleeping conditions in open markets or poorly secured kiosks expose them to physical harm. More troublingly, studies indicate that nearly 70% of kayayei have experienced sexual harassment or violence, and many recount stories of rape, robbery, and abuse at the hands of traders or security forces (Yeboah, 2010). Teenage mothers among them must juggle childcare with labor, often carrying infants on their backs while transporting goods. Kabeer (1999) conceptualizes this as gendered poverty, where intersecting inequalities deny women real choices and force them into survival strategies. Feminist economists have long argued that such undervalued and underpaid labor sustains economies while reinforcing systemic gender hierarchies. The kayayei embody this paradox: simultaneously indispensable and disposable.
Policy responses illustrate the limits of dominant development frameworks. Women in Development (WID) inspired interventions such as shelters, vocational training, or charitable relief tend to treat kayayei as dependents needing rescue rather than as workers deserving labor rights. Women and Development (WAD) approaches draw attention to their structural exploitation within global and class inequalities, yet often overlook the specifically gendered dynamics of violence and vulnerability. By contrast, the Gender and Development (GAD) framework highlights how production and reproduction intersect: kayayei’s economic labor is inseparable from the burdens of care, the risks of violence, and the denial of dignity (Rathgeber, 1990).
As many feminist scholars note, women’s labor has historically been appropriated while their rights remain denied. Recognizing kayayei through a GAD lens means reimagining them not as passive victims but as economic actors whose labor sustains Ghana’s markets. Doing so would shift policy from paternalistic welfare to structural reform: providing fair wages, safe housing, protections against gender-based violence, and social recognition of their contributions.
Kayayei are not simply vulnerable subjects, they are the invisible engines of Ghana’s urban economy. To continue to ignore them is to ignore the very foundations on which Ghana’s markets depend.
Here is a link to a documentary that captures the realities of kayayei in Ghana:
https://youtu.be/rR-OnlLnXLA?si=nIikwX7B1GmCyTPZ
References
Kabeer, N. (1999). Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women's empowerment. Development and change, 30(3), 435-464.
Opare, J. A. (2003). Kayayei: the women head porters of southern Ghana. Journal of social development in Africa, 18(2).
Osei-Boateng, C., & Ampratwum, E. (2011). The informal sector in Ghana (pp. 23-35). Accra: Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Ghana Office.
Rathgeber, E. M. (1990). WID, WAD, GAD: Trends in research and practice. The journal of developing areas, 24(4), 489-502.
From the documentary film, it seemed that the main focus from several of the non-profits was to provide vocational training and/or encourage the kayayei to stay in school to complete their education. Their focus reminds me mostly of WID. The reasoning for vocational training was to pull kayayei out of poverty by providing them with skills so that they could find better-paying and safer employment.
ReplyDeleteI think that this fits the anti-poverty approach (mentioned in Moser's text) in that the organizations were trying to help the girls and young women meet their PGN by earning income in small-scale income-generating projects. For the young women and adolescents who already have children, they have to fulfill at least a double role (if not triple role). Coming out of poverty for not just themselves, but for their child(s) is dependent on their hard work and learning new skills (like in the Efficiency Approach). This assumes that the women will be able to find a job after the training to meet their PGN.
Kabeer makes the case for meeting PGN as a way to then meet SGN. It can be difficult to work or go to school if you need to get food, water, shelter, etc (some of the reasons the girls left for the city to begin with). And the focus of pulling the girls (and some boys) away from their jobs as kayayei is not acknowledging the important part they play in the economy as you said. I agree that GAD would provide structure change so that they not only have better wages and a safe home from sexual violence, but recognition for their contributions to the economy via "informal" occupations and reproductive labor.
I was also reminded of Jamila's blog about Afghan women seeking further education. In her blog post, Jamila noted the effect that PTSD can have on cognition and concentration, which affects learning. For the kayayei who experienced sexual trauma, this is something that is so important to be mindful of in development.
Living with PTSD can make completing assignments very hard some days, or pushing yourself to work so you can make enough to pay the bills (speaking from personal experience). It is even harder when you do not have a stable home. Meeting that need for a safe home can make a big difference. It gives the person more autonomy of their space and allows time and space to heal and thrive, not just survive.
This phenomenal post resonates strongly with me as a Ghanaian. Girls and women from the north migrate to southern Ghana for greener pastures and often end up working as head porters in metropolitan cities such as Accra and Kumasi. This practice has remained unaddressed for ages, even though politicians use it as a campaign message. In the Ghanaian political landscape, women’s empowerment has taken center stage, as most political parties promise to address gender inequality. In many cases, politicians turn a blind eye to women and gender issues after assuming office.
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t agree more with the author that Kayayei contribute significantly to the economy of Ghana through remittances to their loved ones. I have personally witnessed instances where city tax collectors compelled Kayayei to fulfill their obligations. This means that their contribution transcends personal development and extends to nation-building. While their impact may indeed be invisible, the saying goes, “little drops of water make a mighty ocean.”
What is the future of these innocent girls and women who earn a living from this herculean job? This is where Women in Development (WID) interventions come into play. Members of Ghana’s Parliament should move beyond mere pledges to implement by-laws, allocate budgets, and enforce laws to alleviate the plight of vulnerable Kayayei. It must be noted that women (Kayayei) are not a footnote to development; they are part of the engine. They should be recognized as workers who provide invaluable services to shoppers and market women, contributing to nation-building in Ghana.
Thank you, Rose, for this post about making the "invisible visible". As a Ghanaian, I truly appreciate how you are foregrounding the plight of the female head porters. Your blog exposes how Ghana’s economy rests on the shoulders of women whose labor remains unseen and unacknowledged. The phrase “invisible engines of the market,” captures the paradox of the kayayei’s existence, visible in their physical labor yet invisible in policy and protection. It reminds me of Kabeer’s argument that gendered poverty is not just about lack of income, but about lack of power and recognition. The kayayei’s situation reveals how deeply gender, class, and geography intersect to structure inequality. As someone interested in migration, I should be looking at the migration patterns even within Ghana. Every migrant’s story is of survival, resilience, and exclusion shaped by historical and structural forces.
ReplyDeleteAgain, what is more powerful in your post is how you challenge the way development frameworks often fail these women. The critique of WID and WAD interventions feels timely. More often than not, policies treat women like the kayayei as recipients of charity rather than participants in the economy. Viewing them through a Gender and Development (GAD) perspective, one that connects their productive and reproductive roles, makes visible how their struggles are systemic, not personal.
Finally, your blog makes me think about how “empowerment” has been co-opted in development discourse. True empowerment for the kayayei would mean structural change - labor rights, housing, and protection from violence - not just vocational training. As I was reading, I saw some similarities with Melany’s post on how we need to question structural inequalities and promote women as active change-makers, not just passive recipients of developmental aid. We need to, therefore, think critically about who benefits when women’s labor remains undervalued.
Your post captures the paradox of the kayayei; their visibility in Ghana’s marketplaces and invisibility in policy and economic recognition. I want to extend your argument by drawing on our discussions that challenge how global institutions like the IMF define what counts as work, growth, and empowerment.
DeleteSome neoliberal approaches undergird the modernization paradigm. Modernization paradigms continue to measure development through Western economic lenses that privilege formal and monetized forms of labor while discounting the informal and relational economies in which most women in the Global South work. McKinnon et al. (2016) problematize these frameworks, showing how Pacific women’s unpaid and community-based labor is erased by national and international indicators that assume a capitalist, individualist model of productivity. The same holds true for Ghana; we see the kayayei’s indispensable role in urban logistics and rural remittances remaining absent from GDP calculations and formal labor statistics because their labor does not fit the IMF’s “productive” metrics.
This exclusion is a legacy of modernization theory, which universalized Western pathways to development through industrialization, formal employment, and market efficiency. These paradigms, embedded in global institutions, still dictate what qualifies as “real work” and who counts as a “worker.” As dependency theorists, from Gunder Frank to Amin and Rodney have long argued, such frameworks reproduce economic dependency by subordinating local knowledges and informal economies to externally defined standards. A true decolonization of economic thought requires overhauling these global and national metrics to value informal labor systems and the everyday economies of survival and solidarity in which women like the kayayei participate.
In Ghana, the former government’s attempt to house the kayayei under the Akufo-Addo–Bawumia administration (2020–2024) exemplified a top-down, technocratic response. Although the initiative was framed as empowerment, most of the hostels were eventually abandoned because the women were not involved in the planning process, and the structures failed to reflect their socio-economic realities. This outcome underscores the call for place-based, participatory approaches that begin from people’s lived economies rather than externally imposed indicators.
Moreover, the IMF’s instrumental logic that women’s labor should be formalized to boost GDP reflects what we have come to know as a “dangerous equation” between gender equality and economic growth. It treats empowerment as a means to growth rather than as an end in itself. This approach risks replicating neoliberal hierarchies that commodify women’s work while leaving structural inequalities intact.
Decolonial feminist perspectives offer a pathway forward. They call for reciprocity, care, and systematic alternatives that foreground local agency rather than external prescriptions. Applying this to Ghana means shifting from rescuing the kayayei to recognizing and resourcing the organizational forms, kinship networks, and savings cooperatives they already use to survive and support one another.
Ultimately, if we are serious about decolonizing gender and development, we must reject the Western-imposed binaries of formal/informal and productive/unproductive work. Recognizing the kayayei as economic citizens—not welfare subjects—requires reframing value itself: from GDP growth to lived sustainability, from neoliberal inclusion to structural transformation grounded in local economies of care and mutuality.