Ghana is preparing to monetize one of Africa’s largest untapped digital resources by cleaning and digitizing public data before global artificial intelligence companies seek access to it, Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations Minister Samuel Nartey George said.
The government plans to train workers to digitize public records and annotate datasets, arguing that Africa should retain ownership of its data as AI companies increasingly require localized information to improve their models.
“Africa is sitting on the next big natural resource: data,” George said in an interview with Tech Africa News during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
Most existing AI models have been trained primarily on Western datasets despite Africa accounting for about a quarter of the world’s population and more than 2,000 languages, he said.
“When big tech comes looking for that data, we’ve cleaned it up, we’ve annotated it and the use of our data will be on our own terms.”
The minister warned that failing to prepare datasets could leave African countries vulnerable to what he described as “data colonization,” where foreign companies process and control valuable African information.
The strategy is tied to Ghana’s One Million Coders programme, which is training young people in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, cybersecurity and data annotation to build domestic expertise.
The government is also digitizing paper-based public records, including archives and health records, creating what George described as significant employment opportunities while making government data AI-ready.
He said artificial intelligence is likely to create more jobs than it eliminates, provided governments invest in reskilling workers. Ghana has already trained nearly 300,000 public sector employees in AI proficiency through its DigSmart initiative, while the One Million Coders programme aims to prepare a new generation of workers for AI-related occupations.
George said positioning Africa’s data as a strategic asset would help the continent negotiate with global technology companies from a position of strength while supporting the development of AI systems tailored to African languages, markets and use cases.
