Travel Tips: Taking a Taxi in Ghana

So it’s Sunday and I’m in bed eating a very large mango and thinking about taxi drivers, waiters and bouncers. I have no patience for any.  And my current impatience has developed as a result of my very many experiences with them. Let me start with the taxi drivers.

Here in Accra my usual routine is to walk down my street to the side of the main road and wait for a taxi to approach. I live on the busy part of town so getting a taxi is not a problem. The problem is the taxi drivers.

The usual thing is to stop a taxi driver, tell him where you are going and ask him how much he will charge for the distance; depending on his mood he will either smile at you, look away or give you a monkey face and tell you a figure, (sometimes reasonable, sometimes not).

Unspoken Agreement: Always Bargain

In Ghana taxi drivers (and in fact all business people) have this unwritten and unspoken agreement that the buyer must always bargain with the seller. So you either ask for a reduction or tell him how much you are willing to pay. If he accepts you get on board if not you look for the next taxi.

But make sure you act confident about getting another taxi with the rate you are offering. This can actually make him accept your offer. See, taxi drivers in Accra are not very logical in their approach to their work. Maybe I just can’t figure out how they reason, but i think they operate on emotion: greed and pride being dominant.

Some taxi drivers would  rather drive around empty (and waste fuel) than take your offer which may be a few pesewas short of the rate they’ve become used to. With the bargaining process a driver may give in to your offer because you raised a good argument to beat his own or through the exchange you showed that you know the taxi driver-passenger system. Read the rest of this entry