Ghana’s rapidly expanding Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector has yet to generate significant growth across the wider economy, with digital adoption remaining concentrated in payments and services rather than improving productivity in industries such as manufacturing, trade and agriculture, according to a new report commissioned by the government and Germany’s development agency.
The Ghana Digital Economy Outlook 2026 found that ICT sector growth had a correlation of just 0.03 with overall gross domestic product growth between 2014 and 2022, suggesting that the expansion of digital services has not been accompanied by comparable gains across other parts of the economy.
The sector recorded average annual growth of 20.5% over the period, making it Ghana’s fastest-growing industry. Yet its contribution to annual GDP growth remained at or below 1.2 percentage points, highlighting the limited extent to which digital expansion has translated into broader economic productivity.
The findings expose a central challenge for Ghana’s digital transformation agenda: converting increased access to technology and digital financial services into measurable improvements in business operations, industrial production and employment.
The report, commissioned by the Ministry of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), was based on a survey of 1,112 respondents across all 16 regions, 28 key informant interviews and eight focus group discussions.
It also found negative correlations between ICT growth and the finance and insurance sector, at -0.78, and trade, at -0.66. The report suggests that limited integration between digital services and traditional industries, alongside possible regulatory fragmentation, may be preventing technology from generating wider economic benefits.
The analysis does not establish that ICT expansion has caused weaker performance in those sectors, but points to a lack of synchronisation between digital growth and the country’s traditional economic activities.
Ghana’s digital finance market illustrates both the progress and the weaknesses of the transformation. Mobile money transaction volumes increased from GH¢1.1 trillion in 2022 to GH¢1.9 trillion in 2023, while 88.9% of survey respondents reported using mobile money services.
However, 82.9% of respondents said they had experienced fraud, while only 7.3% felt very secure conducting transactions online.
The report identifies cybersecurity weaknesses and inadequate consumer protection as potential constraints on the expansion of digital financial services, particularly as mobile payments become increasingly important to businesses and households.
Connectivity costs are another obstacle. Although 92.5% of respondents accessed digital services through smartphones, 68.6% identified data affordability and poor connectivity as major barriers to participation in the digital economy.
The disparities are more pronounced in northern Ghana, where internet penetration in the Upper West and Upper East regions remains below 20%, according to the report.
These gaps are also affecting the adoption of digital solutions across productive sectors. In agriculture, digital advisory services and weather applications are increasingly being used, but most agritech initiatives remain fragmented rather than integrated into national agricultural systems.
In healthcare, only 23.7% of respondents had ever used telemedicine, despite the rollout of digital health infrastructure. In education, more than 87% of respondents in every geographical zone identified data costs as the primary obstacle to accessing digital learning services.
E-commerce is also constrained by delivery costs, which the report says frequently exceed the value of products being transported, limiting the ability of online businesses to reach customers beyond major urban centres.
Ghana also trails some African peers in the report’s assessment of digital competitiveness. Its Digital Economy Composite Index score of 0.263 places it behind South Africa at 0.969 and Kenya at 0.578, although it ranks ahead of Rwanda at 0.229 and Nigeria at 0.070.
The assessment identifies digital finance as Ghana’s strongest area, while weaknesses in e-government services and secure digital infrastructure remain significant gaps.
To address the challenges, the report recommends a formal fibre-sharing policy to reduce network deployment costs, stronger cybersecurity enforcement and improved consumer redress mechanisms.
It also calls for a national data classification and harmonisation framework to improve information sharing between government institutions, as well as reforms to the Universal Service Fund to support rural broadband expansion, affordable devices and digital literacy.
For the private sector, the report identifies opportunities in digital payments, financial technology, agricultural technology, healthcare platforms and business process outsourcing.
It also recommends developing locally relevant artificial intelligence datasets and digital tools that reflect Ghanaian languages and economic conditions, rather than relying predominantly on technologies developed using foreign datasets.
The study concludes that Ghana’s next phase of digital transformation will depend less on expanding basic access and more on integrating technology into the productive activities of businesses and public institutions.
Without stronger links between digital infrastructure, skills and traditional industries, the country risks sustaining a rapidly growing technology sector whose economic benefits remain concentrated within a relatively narrow part of the economy.
