Is Ghana starting a trade war?

Have you noticed that in recent years the Ghanaian government seems to be coming up with laws specifically targeted at Nigerians doing business in Ghana?  And not in a positive, trade-promoting way. It seems Accra has decided to make life easier for European, American and Chinese businesses to dominate the Ghanaian market by coming up with all sorts of discriminatory (as in applied only to Nigerians) laws designed to force Nigerian businessmen out of their market.

I wonder what would happen if Nigeria retaliated. It has happened before, except back then, decades ago, the tit-for-tat deportations occured in an era when intra-African trade was much less than it is today (and it is quite low today).

By contrast, in recent years, Ghana has been aggressively marketing themselves as a "gateway" to West Africa, and have sought investment to expand and deepen their ports to position themselves a crucial transshipment hub for West Africa.  When you strip away the consultant-speak, what they are doing, especially now that Cote d'Ivoire is recovering from a long period of national crisis, is marketing themselves as a gateway to Nigeria, and as a transshipment hub for Nigeria.

Why then would they be so keen on starting a trade war with Nigeria?  Does that make any sense?

I suppose they can get away with it.  Nigerian governments from 1960 to 2012 (and, alas, beyond) have had no sense whatsoever of what is or isn't in Nigeria's strategic interest, and wouldn't have any sense of what they should or shouldn't do to advance those interests even if you told them what the interests were.

As I must often do on this blog, I will stress again that nationalism has nothing to do with it.  There are, and have always been, a huge number of Ghanaians living, working and doing business in Nigeria. I was taught by Ghanaians in primary school and secondary school. Actually, while I am being critical (as usual) of the Nigerian government's inaction, it is likely the Nigerian government does not want to punish Ghanaians in Nigeria as a retaliatory measure for what the Ghanaian government seems keen on doing to Nigerians in Ghana.

I like that Nigeria is fairly open to trade and other exchanges with our neighbours. I like that Ecobank International is a Togolese bank, but is one of the largest players in the Nigerian banking industry; their Nigerian arm is more important to the corporate bottom-line than their business in Togo (same is true, actually, of quite a few South African businesses too).  And I like that the flip-side of allowing Togolese banks and South African banks (Standard Chartered) access to the Nigerian market is that Nigerian banks are allowed access to other markets in West Africa and more recently East Africa.

That is the way it is supposed to work.