How Ghanaian men sell their semen for over $5,000

According to latest reports, sperm has become one of the hottest commodities being sold in Ghana. The target market for this new booming venture are couples suffering from male infertility, lesbian couples, and single women who pay huge amounts of money to access it.
“Selling of sperm is gradually becoming the new business frontier booming in Ghana because it has many uses in today’s society: making babies, sperm banks, and putting volume in limp hair in order to make it long,” a medical student at the University of Ghana Medical School, who sold sperm five times to a Fertility Center in Accra for GH¢10, 000 ($5,280), told Economic Tribune (ET).
The medical student, who gave his name only as Mensah, said even though selling of sperm was a risky business, it was also rewarding as well.
“I use the proceeds from this business to pay my fees and also support my close pals. Who knows how long I will continue? But whatever happens, I know I can look back on many happy families that I have helped to create,” he stated.
Mrs Naomi Suame, a shop owner at East Legon and many parts of Accra, has been married for 15 years and has two children, none of whom biologically belongs to her husband.
“I discovered my husband was infertile when we got married after two years. But I wanted to experience motherhood. I decided to have artificial insemination. I have never cheated on him. I just got sperm from a willing seller and got two healthy babies. Is that not wonderful?” she asked.
In the case of Naomi, she got a young man from the University of Cape Coast, paid him GH¢12,000 ($6,322) and took his sperm, which she used twice to get the babies. “Sperm is one of the scared commodities for many of us. There is a high demand for it and many young men are going into this venture selling their sperm to help others, who needs it for one reason or the other,” Naomi explained.
Investigations conducted by ET revealed that due to the huge capital outlay of the process, women have now devised a way of beating the system by getting donors (spermsellers) whom they take to the Fertility Centres for harvesting at a cheaper cost and then having the sperm induced in their uterus’s