By Francis Ntow, GNA
Accra, June 19, GNA – Ghana’s artificial intelligence (AI) cannot deliver meaningful public value and transform service delivery for citizens unless the foundational digital infrastructure is already in place, experts say.
The experts noted that AI was not a technology project but a government transformation agenda, calling for the creation of infrastructure that would build trusted data, engender interoperability, secure digital identity, and improve governance and human capacity.
This became known during the Transformation Dialogues webinar, organised by the World Bank Group Ghana Country Office, the African Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET), and the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER).
The webinar, titled: “Digital Innovation and the Role of Artificial Intelligence in Public Sector Services,” brought together government officials, development finance experts, technologists, and policy researchers to foster cross-institutional, evidence-grounded conversations that put foundational thinking at the centre of Africa’s digital future.
The experts assessed where Ghana stood on its digital journey, what foundations were already in place, and what the country must build before AI could meaningfully transform service delivery for its people.
Panellists noted that Ghana had more of the foundation in place than many countries at its income level, with real building blocks and a clear path forward but urged the Government to finish the foundational work before reaching for the AI prize that sat on top of it.
Ms Stela Mocan, Acting Director for Digital Public Infrastructure and Digital Services at the World Bank Group, encouraged integration of pilot programmes and infrastructure, especially in public service delivery.
She noted that governments worldwide were already moving AI from isolated pilots into frontline public services across digital identity, health, payments, agriculture, and tax administration, a shift that Ghana must embrace.
“Value comes from investing across the foundations together – not from compute or algorithms alone,” she said, explaining that those who skipped the foundational work risked ending up with fragmented systems incapable of reaching the citizens they are meant to serve.
“The foundations are being laid. The opportunity now is to sequence them with the safeguards that make AI trusted. This is a growth and jobs agenda – lower costs to do business, wider access for citizens and firms, and a more competitive economy,” she said.
Mr Solomon Kofi Richardson, Director of Technical Services at the National Information Technology Agency (NITA), acknowledged genuine strengths while naming the gaps directly in Ghana’s digital and AI journey.
Ghana had already established seven foundational digital pillars, including a national digital identity system, digital payments infrastructure, and government connectivity backbone.
The rest are shared cloud and data centre capacity, an expanding catalogue of services on Ghana.gov, public key infrastructure for secure authentication, and cybersecurity capabilities across public institutions.
On the country’s shortfalls, he mentioned interoperability as government agencies operated with isolated databases, leading to duplicated records and fragmented point-to-point connections that made it impossible for AI to draw on reliable, unified data.
“Without solving this problem first, any AI deployment risks being built on sand. AI is not the first step – it is the outcome of a mature and integrated digital government ecosystem,” Mr Richardson said.
He said NITA’s National Data Exchange Platform had been designed on a “connect once, share many” principle that would allow agencies to share data securely and give AI systems the accurate, timely, and trusted information they needed to function effectively across government.
He said Ghana would continue investing in data quality and standardisation, cross-agency interoperability, AI skills in the public sector, responsible AI governance, and institutional change management to unlock the full potential of the technology.
James Stewart, Partner and Chief Technology Officer at Public Digital, reinforced the foundational argument through global case studies, showing what effective AI implementation looked like when governments had done the preparatory work.
He noted that the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office consolidated 120 web pages, serving 220 countries and used AI to automate templated replies for 70 per cent of public enquiries.
In the state of Georgia in the United States moved AI-powered treasury risk management tools from pilots in September 2024 to full production by March 2025 and in Barbados, a small government team was using AI to rapidly digitise hundreds of public services.
That, he said, was not for the sake of AI, but to deliver simpler, faster, more accessible services to citizens, attributing it to a focus on clear, learning by doing, experimenting without fear of failure, and leadership that understood what problem was being solved.
Bob Flyod, Director, Innovation and Digital Policy, ACET, identified three significant challenges that the government of Ghana and Africa must navigate before AI could deliver better outcomes.
These are adapting AI systems to local institutional realities, scarcity of quality structured data needed to train reliable models, and infrastructure challenges, where the gap between computing power available in public institutions remained wide.
“Each challenge, in its own way, was a restatement of the session’s central theme but the foundation must come first,” he said, calling for AI literacy across the public sector.
He noted that establishing cross-functional governance boards, managing workforce change, and maintaining public trust were as critical as any infrastructure investment.
GNA
Edited by Agnes Boye-Doe
Reporter: Francis Ntow