Ghana’s growing technology ecosystem is creating an opportunity to use digital infrastructure and skills not only to build an ICT industry, but also to make businesses and public services across the economy more productive.
The Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations Ministry is now pushing for more private capital to move into the technology sector, calling for venture capital, private equity, patient capital, blended finance and guarantees to support businesses across the ICT value chain.
The call comes as the country expands its pipeline of digital talent. As of August 2026, the One Million Coders Programme had recorded 141,954 registered accounts, with cybersecurity, data analytics and artificial intelligence among the areas attracting strong demand.
The ambition extends beyond building a domestic technology market. Mr. Samuel Nartey George, Minister for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, said: “Our ambition is not for Ghana to be a market for digital services. It is for Ghana to be a producer and exporter of them.”
Ghana needs to use this growing pool of talent and digital infrastructure to solve productivity problems in agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, financial services, healthcare, education and government.
Digital systems can reduce the time businesses spend processing documents, making payments, managing inventory, finding customers and accessing finance. For government, better digital platforms can reduce paperwork and improve the speed at which businesses obtain permits, file taxes and interact with public institutions.
The potential is already visible in financial services. Mobile money platforms processed about 954 million transactions valued at approximately GH¢493 billion in June 2026 alone, according to the Bank of Ghana. The central bank is now pushing financial institutions to use transaction data and emerging open-banking infrastructure to improve access to credit for SMEs.
That shift illustrates how Ghana can extract more value from technology already being used by millions of people. Digital payments not only make transactions faster; the data generated from those transactions can also help financial institutions understand business cash flows and assess creditworthiness.
The same principle can apply across other sectors.
Manufacturers can use digital inventory and production systems to reduce waste and improve planning. Farmers can leverage digital platforms for market information, payments and supply-chain coordination, while logistics companies can use data to optimise routes and fleet management. Retailers can also use customer and sales data to improve stock management.
Government agencies could also improve efficiency by making more services interoperable, rather than requiring businesses and citizens to repeatedly submit the same information to different institutions.
Ghana’s challenge is therefore shifting from simply expanding access to technology to ensuring that technology translates into measurable economic output.
Ghana’s latest economic data points to the growing importance of the digital economy. The Information and Communication sector expanded by 30.9% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, contributing 41.5% of the economy’s overall 6.0% growth during the period. The performance places the sector among the strongest drivers of current economic expansion and strengthens the case for using technology to raise productivity across other parts of the economy.
Ghana now has to convert this growth into wider productivity gains by enabling technology companies to serve agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, financial services and public administration.
The Ministry’s call for venture capital, private equity, patient capital, blended finance and guarantees could therefore have an impact beyond startups. More funding for technology businesses would give them room to develop solutions for local businesses, while helping companies in traditional sectors adopt digital tools that can improve how they operate.
Ghana is also positioning artificial intelligence as part of this next phase, with the government highlighting the Ghana National Artificial Intelligence Strategy and a planned US$250 million investment in an AI Computing Centre.
The opportunity is to ensure these investments translate into applications that address real economic bottlenecks rather than technology adoption for its own sake.
Ghana’s ICT sector can become an export industry, but its greater economic value may come from what it enables the rest of the economy to do faster, cheaper and more efficiently.
The transition from a consumer of digital services to a producer and exporter of technology will therefore need to happen alongside a second transition: from an economy that uses technology mainly to transact to one that uses it to raise productivity.
