Before you start

Non-citizen Ghana Card
Residence permit with at least two months' validity remaining
Your foreign licence, in the original
A medical certificate issued within the last three months by a registered medical officer

Step-by-step

1
Get the translation from an accepted body if needed
Licences not in English must be translated, and the DVLA accepts translations only from the Ghana Institute of Languages translation bureau or from the consulate of the issuing state. A private translation will be rejected.
In personWho: You
2
Get the medical certificate
A registered medical officer issues it and it must be no more than three months old at the point of application. Do it after you have the Ghana Card, not before, so nothing expires while you queue.
In personWho: You
3
Apply for conversion at a DVLA office
Submit the original foreign licence, the Ghana Card, the residence permit copy, the medical certificate and photographs, with the conversion fee. The DVLA published a conversion fee in the low hundreds of cedis in 2026 — confirm the current figure at the office rather than online.
In personWho: YouOne visit plus follow-up
4
Expect a possible test depending on category and country
Conversion bypasses the mandatory driving-school hours, but the DVLA may require a theory or practical test depending on the licence category and the issuing country. Ask at application rather than assuming.
In personWho: You
5
Allow four to six weeks and do not let the permit lapse
The residence permit copy must have more than two months to run at the point of application, and processing runs four to six weeks. Applying with a nearly expired permit is the most common reason a conversion is bounced.
In personWho: You4–6 weeks
6
Decide about a car versus Bolt and Yango
Ride-hailing in Accra is cheap, plentiful and works well, and many foreign residents never buy a car. A car makes sense for families, for anyone commuting to Tema or the industrial areas, and for weekend travel to Cape Coast or the Volta — less so for a single professional living and working inside the Airport-to-Osu belt.
Mobile appWho: You

Documents you’ll need

Original foreign driving licence
Accepted English translation, where needed
Non-citizen Ghana Card
Residence permit copy with 2+ months validity
Medical certificate under three months old
Passport photographs

Things most newcomers don’t know

The residence-permit validity rule catches out more conversions than the driving test does.

The DVLA will not accept a residence permit copy that expires within two months of the application date, and conversion takes four to six weeks to process. Someone on a one-year permit who leaves the licence until month ten simply cannot apply, and then has to wait for a renewed permit before starting again. Do the conversion in the first half of your permit year, not the second.

Source: DVLA

Only two bodies can translate a foreign licence, and neither of them is a translation agency.

The DVLA accepts translations from the Ghana Institute of Languages translation bureau or from the consulate of the country that issued the licence. Applicants who arrive with a certified translation from a commercial agency in their home country — a perfectly reasonable thing to have prepared — are turned away and lose the trip. Sort the translation in Accra, not before you fly.

Source: DVLA

Ride-hailing genuinely substitutes for a car in Accra in a way it does not in Lagos.

Bolt and Yango operate at scale across Accra at prices low enough that a daily commute by ride-hailing costs less than running a car once fuel, parking, insurance and a driver are counted. Distances inside the Airport Residential–Cantonments–Osu–East Legon belt are short and traffic, while bad at peak, is not Lagos-scale. Many foreign residents here deliberately do not own a car, which is not a realistic choice in most West African capitals.

Source: community-reported

Ninety days is the line at which you become a resident for licensing purposes, and it is the same line as the Ghana Card.

Ghana uses 90 days of cumulative residence as the trigger both for the non-citizen Ghana Card and for being treated as a resident driver who must convert. That is convenient: the same milestone starts both clocks, and since the Ghana Card is required for the conversion, doing them in that order is not optional. Treat day 90 as an administrative date and book both appointments around it.

Source: DVLA; National Identification Authority