Policy Brief No. 202 — April 2025
Ghana’s Pathway to AI Governance and Its Implications for Africa Thompson Gyedu Kwarkye
Key Points → Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming various sectors, offering the opportunity for economic growth and societal progress in Africa. However, it poses several risks that may disproportionately impact the continent. African countries are developing governance frameworks to navigate these concerns. → Ghana’s 10-year National Artificial Intelligence Strategy emphasizes innovation, talent development and addressing AI-related risks through ethical and regulatory frameworks. It integrates several ethical dimensions to provide a test case for others on the continent. → African governments must adopt a more humancentric governance approach, invest in local talent and foster inclusive AI development to avoid technological dependency while mitigating AI risks and maximizing its benefits. → The dominance of AI by major technology companies highlights disparities between the more prosperous and resource-poor African countries. Bridging these gaps is crucial to ensuring that Africa can influence the future trajectory of AI development.
Introduction AI dominates the global discourse over its contribution to digital transformation. Africa is uniquely positioned to leverage these benefits across several domains. For instance, in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, AI-led digital tools in financial technology, traffic regulation, health care and agriculture deliver productive inputs that fill gaps in the context of weaker, fragile and incapacitated states (Gwagwa et al. 2020). At the same time, concerns have been raised about the risks posed by AI technologies, such as privacy breaches, energy consumption, democracy threats, epistemic biases and transparency issues (see, for example, Wall, Saxena and Brown 2021). Critics also point to AI’s potential negative geopolitical impacts on Africa, particularly as major powers — including China, the European Union and the United States — compete to establish partnerships within Africa’s AI ecosystems, each promoting different standards (Yusuf 2024). With the continent nicknamed the “battleground for geopolitics” (see Miailhe 2018), the competition between these powers frames scholarly debates, policy frameworks, diplomatic events and access to grants and aid. In the last decade, many African countries have prioritized governing AI by developing policies, strategies and agile governance tools that maximize