Ghana’s Rent Control Department awarded a multi-phase national digitalisation contract to SuperTech Limited in September 2024 without publicly disclosing the contract value, and no record of competitive tendering for the project has surfaced in the Public Procurement Authority’s (PPA) online database, raising accountability questions about a company with a documented history of controversy in public sector technology contracts.
The digital platform, accessible at rentcontrol.mwh.gov.gh, allows landlords and tenants across Ghana to register properties, file complaints, sign tenancy agreements and resolve disputes online. Phase one of the project covered 15 offices across 11 regions, with plans to extend coverage to all 16 regions under a second phase.
Neither the Ministry of Works and Housing nor SuperTech disclosed the contract value at the September 2024 launch event or in any subsequent public statement. A check of the PPA’s procurement records database found no listing for the contract. Under Ghana’s Public Procurement Act of 2003 as amended in 2016, multi-phase national digitalisation contracts of this scope would ordinarily require competitive tendering and public disclosure. The Ministry had not responded to questions about the procurement process by the time of publication.
SuperTech Limited, formerly incorporated as Superlock Technologies Limited, is not new to large-scale government Information and Communications Technology (ICT) contracts. In 2011, competitor Smartmatic UK petitioned the PPA, alleging that Superlock Technologies did not meet a key qualification requirement for the Electoral Commission of Ghana’s (EC) biometric voter registration tender, specifically a demonstrated record of similar work in countries with comparable conditions. The PPA ruled in favour of the EC and cautioned it to comply with procurement rules going forward.
The company’s relationship with the EC deepened over subsequent years and eventually became entangled in a constitutional crisis. A committee appointed by the Chief Justice to investigate then-EC Chairperson Charlotte Osei found that she had unilaterally abrogated the original STL contract and re-awarded the same contract to the company without following the Public Procurement Act, signing 12 contracts with STL between February and November 2016, with only one falling within her solo approval threshold. The committee found the conduct “very absurd” and it formed one of the grounds for her removal from office in 2018.
Questions about the EC’s management of its biometric systems remain live. In October 2025, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) dismissed a preliminary objection from the EC and ordered it to cooperate with an ongoing investigation into alleged procurement breaches and maladministration in the handling of the country’s Biometric Voter Management System (BVMS), including the award process for the new platform and the disposal of legacy equipment.
The core questions the Rent Control contract raises are similar to those that have followed government technology procurement in Ghana for over a decade: whether competitive tendering took place, who will own the data the platform generates, and what handover obligations apply when the contract ends. “This platform brings justice, fairness, and efficiency to the doorsteps of every Ghanaian,” the then-Deputy Minister said at the launch. Whether those principles extend to the procurement process itself remains publicly unanswered.
