Norms, Power, and the Socially Embedded Realities of Market Taxation in Northern Ghana
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Research in Brief 168
This paper provides insights into how daily informal realities shape local government taxation. It draws on qualitative data collected in markets in Lawra and Yendi, two districts in Northern Ghana, in 2011 and 2012. The paper contributes to a growing literature focusing on informal institutions and practices that underpin local economies and governance systems, shedding light on the daily experiences of taxpayers in smaller towns – an area of research that has been overlooked despite these contexts being home to a large share of citizens in low-income countries. The authors argue that effective reform may be achieved by ‘working with the grain’ of local governance, designing reform in a way that is consonant with local capacity constraints and the broader social reality in which collection efforts are embedded.
Wilson Prichard is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Chair of the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) and former Executive Officer of the International Centre for Tax and Development (2020-2024). His research focuses on the relationship between taxation and citizen demands for improved governance in Africa.
Vanessa van den Boogaard is a Research Fellow at the ICTD and a Senior Research Associate at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. She completed her PhD thesis on informal revenue generation and statebuilding in Sierra Leone, and has ongoing research on the topic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, and Somalia. Vanessa co-leads the ICTD's research programme on informality and tax.
Citation: Prichard, W.; van den Boogaard, V. and Beyuo T. (2025) Norms, Power, and the Socially Embedded Realities of Market Taxation in Northern Ghana, ICTD Research in Brief 168, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, DOI: 10.19088/ICTD.2025.048
