The United States government has identified Nigerians as the largest group of trafficking victims in Ghana, surpassing Ghanaian nationals.

The U.S. Department of State also upgraded the West African country to Tier 1 in its 2026 Trafficking in Persons Report.

In the report titled “2026 Trafficking in Persons Report: Ghana,’ the U.S. Department of State upgraded Ghana from Tier 2 to Tier 1, which is Washington’s highest category of its human trafficking index. 

“The Government of Ghana fully meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The government made key achievements to do so during the reporting period; therefore, Ghana was upgraded to Tier,” the report read.

According to the report, the Ghanaian government identified 2,331 trafficking victims in 2024, including 492 victims of sex trafficking, 1,302 of labour trafficking and 537 whose forms of exploitation were unspecified.

The report showed that 896 of the identified victims were Nigerian nationals, making Nigeria the country with the highest number of citizens identified as trafficking victims in Ghana in 2025, ahead of Ghana itself, which recorded 862 victims.

Foreign nationals accounted for 1,469 of the identified victims, with Nigerians making up about 61 per cent, while the remaining 39 per cent were from other countries, including Benin, Niger and Senegal.

“Of the 2,331 victims identified, 862 were Ghanaian and 1,469 were foreign nationals. The majority of foreign victims were from Nigeria (896); other victims identified were from Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Togo, Senegal, Niger, and Benin,” the report stated. 

It was gathered that Nigerian women and girls were tricked into travelling to Ghana under the pretence of employment opportunities but were instead forced into the commercial sex industry to repay their transportation costs to the country, while children were forced into forced labour as housemaids. 

“Traffickers recruit Nigerian women and girls to Ghana with false promises of employment, then force them into commercial sex to repay inflated debts for transportation and housing. Young people, migrants, and economically vulnerable populations are targeted for cybercrime exploitation and fraudulent migration offers,” the report noted. 

It added, “Some traffickers exploit family practices which involve sending children to relatives to perform household services in exchange for educational or vocational opportunities.”

The situation improved in 2025, with the Ghanaian authorities investigating more cases, which resulted in the prosecution of 212 alleged traffickers, and apparently contributed to the decision to upgrade Ghana to Tier 1 on the human trafficking assessment ranking. 

“In 2025, the government investigated 222 trafficking cases (83 sex trafficking, 132 forced labor, and seven unspecified forms of trafficking), prosecuted 212 alleged traffickers (31 for sex trafficking, 57 for labor trafficking, and 124 for unspecified forms of trafficking), and convicted 28 traffickers (14 sex traffickers and 14 labor traffickers).

“The government sentenced the majority of convicted traffickers to at least one year imprisonment. This compared with investigating 273 cases, prosecuting 65 alleged traffickers, and convicting 25 traffickers in 2024,” the report stated.