Ghana must broaden its approach to Artificial Intelligence (AI) beyond consumer applications and invest in education, governance and digital infrastructure if it hopes to capture a meaningful share of the economic gains AI is expected to generate across Sub-Saharan Africa, digital marketing and transformation strategist Mawuli Cheribium Amenyedor said.
Speaking at the U.S. Embassy Ghana exchange alumni session on “Leveraging U.S. AI Technologies for Business Success,” Amenyedor said discussions around AI in Ghana are overly concentrated on tools such as ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, while overlooking the foundational layers that underpin the technology.
“AI as a five-layer cake begins from the very level of energy, then to chips, then to infrastructure before the models and the apps,” he said. “Most often than not, our trainings or our interactions with AI limits ourselves only to the models and then the apps.”
Amenyedor, who is also the managing director of STRIMPE said policymakers, businesses and professionals should pay greater attention to AI governance, computing infrastructure and energy systems alongside developing practical skills to deploy AI responsibly.
His comments, however, add to Africa’s race to develop national AI strategies amid expectations that artificial intelligence will reshape industries, labor markets and public services over the coming decade.
Amenyedor cited a Google projection that AI could contribute as much as $30 billion to Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy by 2030, but warned that realizing those gains will depend on whether countries prepare their workforce for AI-driven industries.
“The charge of my thinking is this. “How could we, as a country, how could we, as entrepreneurs, professionals or even as a civilisation, how much of the $30 billion do you want to take?” he asked.
He cautioned that while AI is expected to create economic opportunities, it will also displace some existing jobs, making reskilling and upskilling critical.
“As the $30 billion is predicted or projected to come in, it’s also going to take some out,” he said. “It’s also about re-skilling yourself, re-tooling yourself, making yourself relevant in today’s AI age.”
Rather than simply introducing users to AI applications, Amenyedor advised that organizations should train employees to understand which tools are best suited for different tasks, including managing AI costs through techniques such as token optimization and integrating AI into existing professional software.
He encouraged professionals in architecture, design and other technical fields to connect AI assistants with industry-specific software through model context protocols and other integrations to improve productivity.
“The empires of the future are empires of the mind,” he said. “Use AI to nurture your ideas, use AI to build concepts you think about, learn to adapt to AI and learn to use AI in any of your professional setting.”
On public policy, Amenyedor said education should be Ghana’s starting point for AI adoption, arguing that schools must prepare students for an AI-first economy instead of relying heavily on memorization.
“I think we need to really educate for a future that uses AI,” he said. “We should be preparing children or our kids or our students for a world that will be AI-first.”
He said workplace adoption would largely be driven by market demand but warned that education systems risk leaving future generations behind if they fail to incorporate AI literacy.
Amenyedor, on the contribution of journalists in the era of AI, also urged journalists to adopt AI-powered verification tools as misinformation and manipulated content proliferate online.
“Journalists should also invest in high level literacy,” he said. “Every journalist should be equipped with basic misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation tools to be able to fact check things at the speed of light.”
He added that media organizations should invest in AI-based verification technologies and newsroom training to counter the growing volume of synthetic content circulating on social media, which increasingly breaks news before traditional outlets.
Amenyedor recommended that journalists explore AI tools tailored to African languages and contexts, alongside media monitoring and social listening platforms, saying locally trained AI models can better interpret regional languages and cultural nuances than general-purpose systems.
