Ghana’s policy think tank IMANI has challenged the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) over what it describes as a legally defective drive to license individual ICT professionals and private technology businesses nationwide.
Technology Policy Analyst John Sitsofe Mensah, writing for IMANI, argues that NITA is attempting to manufacture a substantive regulatory mandate out of a general financial instrument. The agency is relying on the Fees and Charges (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 2022, and its 2023 Regulations to justify a licensing sweep that its own founding legislation explicitly prohibits.
The sharpest legal objection targets Section 38(1) of the Electronic Transactions Act, 2008, known as Act 772. That section contains a direct prohibition: NITA cannot issue a licence to an individual. Mensah argues that no line item buried inside a general fees schedule can override that specific statutory prohibition, a principle rooted in the hierarchy of Ghanaian law.
IMANI describes the agency’s strategy as “regulation by invoicing.” Setting a price for a software developer certification, the analysis states, does not create the legal authority to establish or police such a professional category. Revenue collection and regulatory permission are not the same thing.
The analysis also traces the problem to a gap in NITA’s legislative history. The agency has never enacted a comprehensive, sector-specific Legislative Instrument to operationalise its mandate under the 2008 Acts. That vacuum, Mensah contends, pushed NITA toward the fees schedule as a workaround, producing a regulatory architecture built on an unstable foundation.
Beyond the legal arguments, IMANI questions whether state-mandated ICT licensing serves any practical purpose. The technology sector already operates under rigorous globally recognised credentials from organisations such as ISACA, CompTIA, AWS, and Microsoft. A locally issued certificate, the analysis argues, cannot match those standards in rigor or international portability. Mandatory licensing also risks excluding self-taught developers, a cohort central to Ghana’s growing technology workforce.
Mensah draws a sharp historical comparison, likening the approach to Britain’s 1865 Locomotive Act, which required a person to walk ahead of every motorised vehicle waving a red flag. That law, designed to impose order on a disruptive technology, effectively handed other nations a competitive advantage. He warns that Ghana risks a similar outcome if it imposes rigid gatekeeping on an industry that thrives on open access and decentralised learning.
IMANI is calling on the government to ground any future ICT regulation in clear primary legislation, incentivise the adoption of internationally recognised certifications, and require regulators to publish transparent performance data as an accountability measure.
