Ghana’s Finance Minister has warned that Africa is in danger of repeating its historical experience of resource extraction in a new digital form, and has called for a deliberate continental investment strategy in digital infrastructure to prevent the continent from becoming a passive consumer of the global technology economy.
Dr Cassiel Ato Baah Forson made the remarks as keynote speaker at the 12th Ishmael Yamson and Associates Business Roundtable, held on Thursday at the Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra under the theme “Unlocking the Next Quarter Century.” The event drew up to 1,000 in-person delegates and more than 15,000 virtual participants from across Africa.
The Minister argued that Africa’s fundamental problem has never been a shortage of resources but rather what he described as the persistent export of value and import of dependency. He cautioned that this pattern was now repeating itself in the digital age, where data and digital output leave the continent with little value retained locally.
Ato Forson challenged African policymakers and business leaders to ask who owns the continent’s “digital rails,” who stores its data, who finances its fibre backbone, and who controls its payment systems, framing these not as technical questions but as economic sovereignty questions with long-term consequences for Africa’s competitiveness and self-determination.
He identified digital infrastructure as one of six pillars essential to Africa’s next phase of development, alongside energy, transport and logistics, commercial agriculture, financial systems, and human capital. He argued that without investment across all six, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) would remain aspirational rather than operational.
The Minister called for a continental digital strategy built around regional data centres, affordable broadband, cross-border payment systems, cybersecurity frameworks, AI readiness, and digital skills development for millions of young Africans. “The next global economic frontier would be built not only with roads and ports but with code, connectivity, computation, and innovation,” he said.
On Ghana’s domestic agenda, Ato Forson pointed to the Mahama administration’s Reset Agenda as a framework for financial inclusion, improved public service delivery, and digital entrepreneurship, positioning Ghana’s ongoing digital public infrastructure reforms as part of a broader continental leadership role.
