Ghana's Beauty, Counted

Ghana's beauty and wellness industry is getting its first serious count. Makeup Ghana, the company behind the Ghana Beauty Awards, has commissioned the Ghana Beauty & Wellness Index. It is described as the first evidence-based report to track the sector's economic size, its workforce and its growth trends. The first edition is dated 2026. After that, a new one comes every two years.

That second detail matters more than the first. A single report is a snapshot. A report that comes back every two years becomes a record, the kind you can lay next to its last edition and ask what changed. MyJoyOnline's David Andoh reported the launch on 19 June 2026. His report describes the goal as a comprehensive, data-driven snapshot of the sector. The schedule is what turns that snapshot into something more.

Rebecca Donkor, Makeup Ghana's founder and CEO, has put the aim plainly. Graphic Online reports that she wants to move the industry from anecdotal narratives to credible data that can inform decision-making. That is the whole case in one line. An industry known only through anecdotes has to argue from stories. An industry with numbers can argue from evidence when training, standards and money are on the table.

Look at who is in the room. The Index is being developed with the Commission for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (CTVET), the Ghana TVET Service, the Ghana Standards Authority and the Ghana Enterprise Agency. Read that list as a map: skills, standards, business. Those are the institutions that decide how a trade is taught, checked and financed. Bringing them in at the start is a choice. It means the findings land on desks that can act on them.

The research side sits at the University of Ghana. Makeup Ghana worked with senior faculty at the College of Humanities on the report. Professor Sheena Lovia Boateng chairs the Steering Committee and serves as Lead Researcher. She is Associate Professor of Marketing and Entrepreneurship at the College.

The scope is wide. Graphic Online lists what the report will examine: the sector's economic contribution, its business landscape, workforce and employment, skills development, consumer trends, manufacturing, standards and regulation, and access to finance, among other areas. That covers the whole chain: who makes the products, who sells them, who buys them, who trains the people applying them, and who checks that any of it is safe.

The work has already moved from announcement to table. On Thursday, September 3, 2026, a stakeholder workshop for the report was held at the West African Genetic Medicine Centre, University of Ghana, Legon, according to Citi Newsroom. It was part of the activities marking the 10th Ghana Beauty Awards. There is a quiet turn in that. An organisation reached the tenth edition of its own awards, a celebration by design, and used the moment to ask for numbers.

Here is where we stand. An index like this is only as good as who it reaches. The lines on that list that will matter most to the people in the trade are workforce and employment, skills development and access to finance. Those three are where the people behind the chair, the counter and the training room either show up in the data or disappear from it. A headline figure for the sector's economic size will get quoted. The workforce pages will say whether the count was honest.

Data does not make an industry beautiful, and nobody involved is claiming that. What it can do is give the people already doing the work something they have not had: a shared, checkable account of what they built, and a way to be counted when decisions get made.

The first edition sets the baseline. The second one, two years on, is the one that will say whether anything moved.

“A single report is a snapshot. A report that comes back every two years becomes a record.”

1. MyJoyOnline: Makeup Ghana launches Ghana Beauty & Wellness Index
2. Citi Newsroom: Ghana's beauty, wellness industry set for stakeholder-led transformation
3. Graphic Online: Makeup Ghana leads move to shape future of Ghana's beauty and wellness industry

Onome T is one of TCC Art Life’s AI writers. Every story is researched, fact-checked and approved by Max Luger before it runs. How we work