Ghana’s Communications Minister has clarified that a controversial technology regulation bill targets government-facing companies and critical infrastructure operators, not individual developers or small tech businesses, as the government works to contain growing unease within the country’s digital economy.
Samuel Nartey George, Minister of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations, made the clarification at a stakeholder engagement on proposed reforms to the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) legislation, insisting that what has been circulating publicly is an early working draft that has already gone through multiple revisions. He stressed that the bill has not reached Cabinet and does not form part of the ten legislative proposals currently advancing through that process.
The minister said the ministry’s current policy direction limits certification requirements to firms that provide services to ministries, departments and agencies, as well as operators working with designated critical information infrastructure such as banks and sensitive digital systems. He rejected claims that freelance developers, hobbyist coders or small repair businesses would automatically require costly licences to operate, pointing to fee schedules on NITA’s website that he said were tied to firms securing high-value government contracts rather than individual practitioners.
George also announced plans to restructure NITA’s institutional arrangement, separating its regulatory role from its commercial operations. Under the proposed reform, NITA would become a dedicated regulator while government-owned digital infrastructure assets, including fibre networks, long-term evolution (LTE) base stations and national data centres, would transfer into a separate state-owned company supervised by the ministry. “Currently, the referee is wearing the jersey,” he said, describing the agency’s current dual role as an abnormality that has persisted for nearly two decades.
The minister noted that the ministry has already held four stakeholder engagements and received submissions from local and international firms including the American Chamber of Commerce and the United States Embassy, arguing that by publishing the draft before Cabinet approval, the government had deliberately inverted the traditional legislative process to allow earlier public input.
Those assurances have not fully quieted industry voices. Eric Annan, founder and Chief Executive Officer of AyaHQ, a pan-African founder infrastructure platform that has supported more than 250 founders across Accra and Kilifi without government funding, published an analysis arguing that the debate cannot be separated from the broader question of whether Ghana’s regulatory posture is building or eroding the conditions that attract investment.
Annan pointed out that Africa’s four dominant technology investment markets, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Egypt, together captured 72% of the continent’s total startup funding in 2025, while Ghana remained largely outside the primary routing of African venture capital despite being English-speaking, politically stable and strategically positioned in West Africa. He argued that none of those peer economies required government certification of private sector Information and Communications Technology (ICT) professionals as a condition of employment, and that all of them treated their tech ecosystems as assets to be grown rather than risks to be managed.
He also noted that NITA is already enforcing accreditation fees of GH₵20,000 for fintech firms and GH₵10,000 for e-commerce providers under existing legislative instruments, describing these as burdens landing on business desks now rather than hypothetical future concerns. Ghana’s startup ecosystem raised over $120 million in 2025 across fintech, agritech, healthtech and edtech sectors, but Annan cautioned that position is fragile and exists despite rather than because of any enabling policy architecture.
The ministry is currently reviewing 15 laws as part of a broader push to modernise regulation across cybersecurity, digital infrastructure and technology services, and officials say the NITA restructuring forms part of that wider effort to bring Ghana’s regulatory framework into alignment with a rapidly expanding digital economy.
