Ghana Unveils National AI Strategy and Emerging Technologies Bill, Mandates Government AI by 2026

Ghana's AI Push: National Strategy, Emerging Tech Bill, and a 2026 Government AI Mandate

At the ENJOY AI 2025 African Open in Accra, Deputy Minister for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, Mohammed Adams Sukparu (MP), announced a National AI Strategy and an Emerging Technologies Bill covering AI, robotics, and blockchain. He spoke on behalf of sector Minister Samuel Nartey George (MP).

The government set a clear bar: from 2026, all agencies must use AI tools to improve efficiency and service delivery. For IT and development teams in Ghana-and vendors targeting the public sector-this signals a new operating model.

What's changing

• Policy direction: A National AI Strategy will guide use cases in health, education, agriculture, security, and public services.
• Governance and ethics: An Emerging Technologies Bill will set ethical and operational standards for AI, robotics, and blockchain.
• Skills pipeline: One Million Coders and Girls-in-ICT are scaling talent, while an AI Boot Camp for Cabinet ministers builds executive literacy.
• Adoption deadline: By 2026, government agencies are expected to deploy AI tools in workflows, requiring procurement-ready solutions.

Implications for IT and development teams

• Compliance-first builds: Expect requirements around fairness, explainability, audit trails, and human oversight. Align with Ghana's data laws and security standards; see the Data Protection Commission.
• Data foundations: Catalog data sources, define access controls, and implement retention and anonymization policies. Prepare for dataset documentation and lineage as part of tenders.
• MLOps readiness: Standardize pipelines for training, deployment, monitoring, and rollback. Bake in drift detection, bias checks, and model registries.
• Interoperability: Favor APIs, open standards, and modular architectures to integrate with legacy systems common across ministries.
• Security-by-default: Threat models for model endpoints and data stores, least privilege, encrypted transit/storage, and incident response tied to AI failure modes.
• Procurement fit: Prepare documentation: DPIAs, model cards, SLAs, uptime/SOC reports, and onboarding playbooks for public-sector deployment.

Where to focus first

• High-ROI pilots: Triage use cases with fast payback-document processing, citizen support, case triage, fraud signals, supply chain forecasting in agriculture.
• Data quality lifts: Clean datasets and unify identifiers across agencies to reduce model noise and rework.
• Human-in-the-loop: Add review steps in clinical, security, and benefits decisions to reduce risk and improve trust.
• Talent upskilling: Cross-train developers in prompt engineering, evaluation, and secure AI patterns. Consider role-based learning paths via Complete AI Training: Courses by Job.

Ecosystem notes

The event theme, "Chasing the Stars," framed this as a youth-first push. The MakersPlace Ghana and ENJOY AI built an inclusive arena where robotics, coding, and AI are practical, not theoretical.

For builders, the signal is strong: Ghana is moving from pilots to policy-backed adoption. If you can deliver measurable outcomes, compliant tooling, and clear runbooks, 2026 is your deadline-and your window.

Useful reference: Ministry announcements and updates are expected via the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation.