The writer
In my role at rfgPHD, I spend my days analyzing the intersection of consumer behavior, media, and technology. And as we navigate 2025, there is no conversation more critical in Ghana than the one about mobile. The truth is, many brands are still operating with a dangerously outdated mindset, viewing the mobile phone as just another channel—a smaller screen on which to run their existing playbook.
This is a fundamental misreading of the market. In Ghana, mobile is not a channel; it is the entire ecosystem. It’s the bank, the mall, the marketplace, and the community square all rolled into one. From our vantage point, we see three seismic shifts in mobile behavior that are not just trends, but the new foundational principles for any brand serious about growth. Ignoring them is no longer a strategic option; it’s a commercial liability.
Here is our strategic briefing on the forces shaping the modern Ghanaian consumer.
- Mobile Money is The Operating System of Ghanaian Life
The first, and arguably most profound, shift we observe is the evolution of Mobile Money (MoMo) from a simple payment tool into the de facto operating system for Ghana’s digital economy.
The scale is difficult to overstate. The Bank of Ghana’s report on 2024 data showed the total value of mobile financial transactions hitting a staggering GHS 3.02 trillion (approximately $196.7 billion USD). This explosion is a testament to its deep integration into the daily lives of Ghanaians, where active mobile money accounts (17.5 million back in 2021) have long surpassed the number of traditional bank accounts. For millions, a MoMo wallet is their primary financial account. Its indispensability was cemented when the controversial 1.5% e-levy was ultimately dropped, a policy reversal that underscored a critical reality: the MoMo ecosystem is simply too vital to the national economy to be inhibited.
The Strategic Mandate: Brands must stop treating MoMo as just another payment option alongside cash or cards. It is the primary financial rail. Your mandate is to embed your brand within this ecosystem. This means flawless, one-click MoMo integrations at every single touchpoint. It means exploring QR code payments for in-store speed and leveraging MoMo’s capabilities to build innovative loyalty programs. If your payment process is anything less than seamless, you are placing a deliberate barrier between you and the mainstream market.
- Commerce is a Conversation, Not a Funnel
Secondly, we’re witnessing the rapid obsolescence of the traditional, linear marketing funnel. In its place is a dynamic, collapsed model driven by social and conversational commerce. The entire journey, from brand discovery to final purchase, now happens fluidly within a single chat window.
Our data consistently shows that Ghanaians discover new products on social platforms like Instagram and Facebook. But the conversion doesn’t happen on a website. It happens in a WhatsApp chat. A customer sees an ad, taps to message the business, asks questions, gets real-time answers, and receives a MoMo number to complete the purchase. They send a screenshot as proof of payment, and the delivery is arranged—all without ever leaving the app.
This isn’t just a tactic for small businesses; it’s a mainstream consumer expectation for immediacy, trust, and personalization.
The Strategic Mandate: You must re-orient your marketing objectives. The primary goal is no longer to drive clicks to a website but to initiate and convert conversations. Your team needs to be trained in conversational sales, not just customer service. Your KPIs must evolve from measuring web traffic to measuring conversation quality, response time, and in-chat conversion rates. Your brand’s voice must be as authentic and responsive in a WhatsApp chat as it is in a multi-million cedi TV campaign.
- Friction Isn’t a Glitch; It’s a Breach of Trust
Finally, and this is a point I cannot stress enough to our clients: in the Ghanaian mobile landscape, technical performance is the foundation of brand trust. Consumers have zero patience for friction. A slow-loading site, a buggy app, or a failed payment is not interpreted as a minor technical issue. It is seen as a sign of an unprofessional and untrustworthy business.
In a market where trust is the ultimate currency and concerns about online security are valid, every moment of digital friction erodes your brand’s credibility. The subconscious thought process is immediate: “If this company can’t even get its app to work properly, how can I trust them to deliver the product I paid for?” A seamless digital experience is the modern-day handshake; it’s the first promise your brand makes to its customers.
The Strategic Mandate: Frame your UX and tech development not as an IT cost center, but as a core pillar of your brand management strategy. Obsess over speed, simplicity, and reliability across all devices and network conditions. Your MoMo payment integration must be absolutely infallible. The ROI on this investment isn’t just a lower cart abandonment rate; it’s the preservation of your brand equity. In this market, a frictionless experience is the most powerful brand promise you can deliver.
The question for every brand leader in Ghana is no longer “Do we have a mobile strategy?” but rather, “Is our entire business strategy built for a mobile-native reality?” These three megatrends are not independent forces; they are a deeply interconnected portrait of the modern Ghanaian consumer. The brands that will thrive are those who see this new landscape not as a challenge, but as an unprecedented opportunity. Our role is to help them seize it.
By Raphael Beinamwin Director, rfgPHD