Ghana’s newly launched National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy for 2025 to 2035, unveiled by President John Dramani Mahama in Accra on April 24, is drawing scrutiny from industry specialists who say internal inconsistencies and unresolved governance questions could complicate its ambitious implementation agenda.
Desmond Israel, founder and lead consultant at Information Security Architects Ltd, identified what he described as a “mechanical revision” of an earlier policy framework, pointing to sections of the strategy that retain language referencing a 2033 endpoint, consistent with a previous 2023 to 2033 draft, despite the document being positioned as a fresh ten-year roadmap through 2035.
“National strategies are built around timelines. If those timelines are inconsistent within the same document, it weakens confidence in execution planning,” Israel said. He also questioned the methodology section, which cites stakeholder consultations conducted in 2022 without clearly indicating whether new engagements informed the latest version.
On governance, Israel raised concerns about the strategy’s institutional architecture. The document references a Responsible AI Authority, a Responsible AI Office, and a National AI Office without defining their respective mandates or how they would relate to one another. “AI policy is governance infrastructure, not branding. Without clearly defined institutions, implementation risks becoming fragmented,” he said.
Separately, digital creator and cybersecurity analyst Hector Dotse said the more consequential issue is what the strategy leaves unresolved. While he commended what he called an “honest diagnostic” of Ghana’s current position and praised the document’s one-trillion-token target for Ghanaian language datasets by 2030 as one of its most compelling commitments, he identified three major decisions that remain deferred.
The strategy sets a GH¢200 billion private investment target but does not outline the instruments required to mobilise that capital. It also stops short of specifying a regulatory model, leaving open whether Ghana will adopt a risk-based framework similar to the European Union (EU), a sector-led approach like the United Kingdom (UK), a state-coordinated model comparable to China, or sandbox-driven regulation as practised in Singapore. Additionally, Dotse noted the absence of procurement principles ahead of major infrastructure commitments, including a planned national AI compute centre.
“None of these requires reopening the strategy,” Dotse said. “All of them require follow-on documents in the coming months.” He warned that the principal risk was not outright failure but gradual misalignment between the strategy’s ambitions and its implementation architecture.
The strategy targets a GH¢500 billion contribution of AI to gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035 and is built around eight pillars covering education, infrastructure, data governance, innovation, and public sector adoption. A recent pilot assessment by the African AI Governance Index placed Ghana in the “emerging” category with a score of 35.7, below several continental peers, with analysts noting the gap lies less in vision than in regulatory follow-through.
Both experts said Ghana’s AI ambitions remain achievable but stressed that closing the gap between policy intent and execution would require tightening the framework in the months ahead.
