Ghana’s Finance Minister, Dr. Cassiel Ato Baah Forson, has warned that Africa stands at risk of repeating centuries of economic marginalisation in a new form, this time through the loss of digital assets and data, and has called for deliberate continental investment in digital infrastructure to prevent the region from becoming a passive consumer in the emerging global digital economy.
Speaking as the keynote speaker at the 12th Ishmael Yamson & Associates Business Roundtable, themed “Unlocking the Next Quarter Century,” the Minister argued that Africa’s historical challenge has never been a shortage of resources but rather the “persistent export of value and the import of dependency”, a pattern he cautioned is now manifesting in the digital age, where raw materials and data alike are leaving the continent with limited local value retention.
Ato Forson identified digital infrastructure as one of six pillars critical to Africa’s next phase of development, alongside energy, transport and logistics, commercial agriculture, financial systems, and human capital. Without deliberate investment across all six, he argued, continental integration under the African Continental Free Trade Area would remain aspirational rather than operational.
On the digital question, the Minister was direct. He challenged African policymakers and business leaders to confront who owns the continent’s “digital rails,” who stores its data, who finances its fibre backbone, and who controls its payment systems — framing these not as technical queries but as “economic transformation and sovereignty questions” with long-term consequences for competitiveness and self-determination.
Ato Forson called for a continental digital strategy encompassing regional data centres, affordable broadband expansion, cross-border payment systems, cybersecurity frameworks, AI readiness, and “digital skills for millions of young Africans.” He noted that the next global economic frontier would be built not only with roads and ports, but with “code, connectivity, computation, and innovation.”
On Ghana specifically, the Minister pointed to the Mahama administration’s Reset Agenda as a framework for deepening financial inclusion, improving public service delivery, and advancing digital entrepreneurship, describing the country’s ongoing digital public infrastructure reforms as consistent with a broader continental imperative that Ghana intends to help lead.
The 12th Ishmael Yamson & Associates Business Roundtable, which the Minister commended for “twelve years of consistency and intellectual leadership,” brought together government, business, and academic stakeholders to deliberate on Africa’s strategic positioning over the next twenty-five years.
