Before you start

Non-citizen Ghana Card, for a durable registration
Passport with the visa or residence permit, for the short-term registration
An unlocked handset
A residential address, for fixed internet

Step-by-step

1
Register on a passport only as a bridge
You can activate a SIM on a passport, and it will work for around 30 days before deactivation. Treat that number as temporary. Do not give it to anyone who matters until the Ghana Card registration is done.
In personWho: YouDay 1
2
Re-register on the Ghana Card as soon as you have it
Take the card to the operator's own service centre and convert the registration. This is what makes the number permanent, and it is also what your mobile money wallet is tied to.
In personWho: YouAfter the Ghana Card
3
Use an operator's own shop, not a roadside agent
Biometric capture and foreign documentation are handled correctly at MTN, Telecel and AT service centres. Agent registrations are where mismatches and later deactivations come from.
In personWho: You
4
Set up mobile money on the same number
MoMo is tied to the SIM registration and the Ghana Card. Doing it on the temporary passport-registered number means losing the wallet when the number dies.
Mobile appWho: You
5
Ask what fixed internet is physically in the building
Fibre availability in Accra is street by street. Ask the landlord which providers other tenants use rather than checking a coverage map, and ask specifically whether the building has an internal connection or whether the drop would need to be run.
OnlineWho: You
6
Put the router and access point on a UPS
Dumsor is live in 2026, ECG has at times declined to publish a fixed load-shedding timetable, and outages are therefore unpredictable. A small uninterruptible power supply for the router keeps you online through short cuts and through generator switchover — a cheap purchase that changes how remote work feels here.
In personWho: You

Documents you’ll need

Non-citizen Ghana Card
Passport with visa or residence permit
Proof of address, for fixed internet

Things most newcomers don’t know

A passport-registered SIM dies at about 30 days, and it takes your mobile money wallet with it.

Ghana permits short-term visitors to register a SIM on a passport, but the registration is time-limited and the line is deactivated after roughly 30 days unless converted to a non-citizen Ghana Card registration. Because MoMo wallets, bank one-time passwords and every account you have opened are tied to that number, losing it a month in is genuinely disruptive. Either start the Ghana Card immediately, or keep the temporary number out of anything important.

Source: National Communications Authority; telecom operators

Dumsor came back, and it is unscheduled this time.

Ghana's power cuts returned during 2026, with a substation fire at Akosombo removing a large block of cheap generation and ageing cables and overloaded transformers doing the rest. What makes it harder than the 2015 crisis is the absence of a published load-shedding timetable for much of the period — you cannot plan around a schedule that has not been issued. Anyone whose income depends on being online should treat backup power as a housing requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

Source: Electricity Company of Ghana; Ministry of Energy

Ask the landlord about fibre, not the provider's coverage map.

Coverage maps show where an operator sells service, not which buildings have a physical drop. In Accra two houses on the same street can have completely different options, and getting a new line run to a compound that has never had one is a timeline you do not control. Two minutes at a viewing — which providers do the other tenants use? — replaces a fortnight of uncertainty.

Source: community-reported

Accra is a genuinely good remote-work base for West Africa, with one dependency.

English is the working language, the time zone is GMT so European hours are trivially compatible, mobile data is cheap and widely available, and the city has a real coworking and returnee community. The single dependency is power. Solve backup — a UPS at minimum, a building with a generator ideally — and the rest of the picture is better than almost anywhere else in the region. Ignore it and the same city feels unworkable.

Source: community-reported