Counting Ghana's Beauty Business
Ten editions of awards, a first report
As the Ghana Beauty Awards reach their tenth edition, Makeup Ghana and University of Ghana researchers begin a study billed as the first comprehensive assessment of the industry behind them.
On Thursday, 3 September 2026, the work started at Legon. Makeup Ghana and senior faculty from the University of Ghana's College of Humanities met at the West African Genetic Medicine Centre on the university's campus for a stakeholder technical workshop. It is an unusual place for a beauty story, and it fits the job: they are setting out to measure an industry.
The workshop was held to kick-start the inaugural Ghana Beauty & Wellness Report. Citi Newsroom reported that it is designed to provide "the first comprehensive, evidence-based assessment" of Ghana's beauty and wellness industry. The scope is wide: economic contribution, business landscape, workforce and employment, skills development, consumer trends, manufacturing, standards and regulation, access to finance and investment opportunities.
The timing is part of the point. The workshop belongs to the activities marking the 10th Ghana Beauty Awards. An industry whose awards have reached a tenth edition is now asking to be counted.
Start with the awards, because ten editions is a real run. The event began as the Ghana Makeup Awards. Under its current name it describes itself as Ghana's first and only annual beauty awards event that rewards excellence in the beauty industry. The ninth edition was set for Friday, 24 October 2025, at Omanye Hall in the Labadi Beach Hotel. The tenth is the THRIVE Edition, and the awards site has been announcing the official unveiling of its nominees. This year's list adds fashion, banking and insurance categories. An event that began with the makeup chair now reaches well past it.
How a nominee wins is worth reading closely. Judging by industry and category experts makes up 40 percent of the marks. Public voting gives a nominee up to 30 percent. The final 30 percent comes from an interview with the Awards Board. On those numbers, a loud following helps but cannot take a category alone. Most of the decision rests with people who know the work and with the nominee's own case for it, made face to face.
Now the report, and who is building it. Professor Sheena Lovia Boateng, Associate Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the College of Humanities, chairs the Steering Committee and serves as Lead Researcher. The committee includes Tina Yirenkyi, National President of the Ghana Hairdressers and Beauticians Association (GHABA), and Valerie Lawson, a makeup artist and industry professional.
That mix suggests the study means to hear from the trade itself. Seating the national hairdressers' association and a working makeup artist next to the researchers should help it ask questions the trade will recognize, guided by people who know where the work actually happens.
Lady Rebecca Donkor, Founder and CEO of Makeup Ghana, set out the purpose. Citi Newsroom reported that she "emphasised the importance of moving the beauty and wellness industry from anecdotal narratives to credible data." Makeup Ghana is inviting organizations to support the report through advertising, sponsorship, partnerships, data contributions or other forms of support.
Standards and regulation are on the report's list, and Ghana has regulated this industry before. Ghana's Food and Drugs Authority decided to ban cosmetics containing the skin bleaching ingredient hydroquinone. "From August 2016, all products containing hydroquinone will not be allowed into the country," FDA spokesperson James Lartey said, as quoted by Dazed. Cosmetics Business reported that the decision followed a directive from the Ghana Standards Authority and applied to imported products. Quartz reported that the FDA called the ban a matter of public safety.
The ban sat inside a larger conversation. Quartz described skin-lightening as "a direct byproduct of colorism," a form of discrimination that deems lighter skin better than darker skin. In its report on the ban, Dazed cited an estimate that 30 percent of women in Ghana used skin-lightening products.
Art Life has not confirmed how the rule works in practice today. A report that studies standards, regulation, manufacturing and consumer trends together is one place that answer could come from.
For now, a tenth set of nominees is on the way, and the Steering Committee and research team move on to refining the research framework and identifying and collecting data. The industry that does Ghana's faces and hair for the camera is sitting for its own portrait.
“The industry that does Ghana's faces and hair for the camera is sitting for its own portrait.”
- Citi Newsroom: Ghana's beauty, wellness industry set for stakeholder-led transformation
- Ghana Beauty Awards
- Dazed: Ghana bans the sale of skin bleaching products
- Quartz: Skin-lightening is a $10 billion industry, and Ghana wants nothing to do with it
- Cosmetics Business: Ghana bans skin lightening cosmetic products
