In the dim light of a wooden shack on the outskirts of Kumasi, Ghana’s second biggest city, Kwaku, a blacksmith, proudly lifts his single barrel shotgun from beside a stack of cocoa pod pruners he has made for sale to local farms. “I sell a lot of these pruners, but I make a better profit on the guns,” he says clutching the smooth wooden butt of the rifle. The rifle is just one of tens of thousands of illegal weapons that are estimated to be produced in Ghana each year from small-scale blacksmith workshops.

Despite Ghana’s reputation as a stable and benevolent force in West Africa, its gun trade plays a significant part in increasing the flow of unwanted weapons within the region. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the executive secretary of Ecowas, West Africa’s regional body, estimates that the region may be awash with as many as 8m small arms.