Value addition in Ghana's coconut industry

Ghana grows more coconuts than any other country in Africa. Most of that crop still leaves as whole nuts. The oil, the jobs, and the margin are made somewhere else.

Reporting on the sector puts Ghana’s coconut export earnings at about 12 million US dollars a year, most of it unprocessed nuts. In 2022 the split was roughly 6.3 million dollars from fresh coconuts and 6 million dollars from processed products. A national seedling push is meant to expand cultivation and lift production, with a published target of 720,000 metric tonnes a year. The crop is growing. The question is who processes it.

A 2024 study of the Jomoro Municipality, in Ghana’s Western Region, shows why so little is processed at home. Exporters paid about 100 cedis per 100 dry coconuts. Local virgin coconut oil processors paid about 60. Farmers in that study sold 70 to 100 percent of their crop to exporters. The nuts go where the farm-gate price is higher, and the oil is made after they have left.

The market on the other side of that choice is large. Industry reporting valued the global virgin coconut oil market at about 2.64 billion US dollars in 2025, with a 2026 figure near 2.88 billion and growth close to 9 percent a year. Ghanaian commentary has described that as a market the country is leaving on the table, because the nuts ship out raw.

Value addition means the press, the bottle, and the buyer relationship stay in Ghana. Cooking oil, virgin coconut oil, and hair products made from that oil are the finished goods. Bulk oil sold to other companies is the same idea at a larger scale. Pressing byproducts can go into energy production and to other makers as inputs, so more of the nut is used here.

BeaCoPure is one press in that picture. We source coconuts in the Volta Region, we press the oil there, and we sell it as cooking oil, hair care, and wholesale supply. We are not a government programme. We are a producer doing the work the export numbers say Ghana still needs more of.

If you buy oil, start with how we produce it or wholesale supply. If you want the oil in a shop, see where to buy coconut oil in Ghana.