Ghana has unveiled an expansive national artificial intelligence strategy, laying out a 10-year plan that combines headline economic targets with a detailed governance framework – an approach policymakers hope will position the country as a leading AI hub in Africa. Ghana sets ambitious AI targets with new 10-Year National Strategy
The 82-page National AI Strategy 2025–2035 sets out eight pillars spanning infrastructure, data, skills, innovation and regulation. Unlike many policy blueprints on the continent, the document pairs long-term ambition with quantifiable milestones, named implementing agencies and defined timelines.
Among its most striking commitments: Ghana aims for AI to contribute 500 billion cedis (about $30 billion) to gross domestic product by 2035. The strategy also targets compute capacity of 10²¹ floating-point operations per second by 2027 and the creation of one trillion tokens of Ghanaian-language datasets by 2030—benchmarks that signal a focus on both infrastructure scale and linguistic inclusion.
Officials say the emphasis on measurable outputs reflects lessons from earlier digital strategies that struggled at the implementation stage. The plan was developed through a multi-year consultation process led by the Responsible AI Lab at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, alongside government agencies and international partners, and follows Ghana’s completion of the UNESCO Readiness Assessment Methodology for AI governance.
A central feature of the strategy is the creation of a new statutory regulator, the Responsible AI Authority, expected to be established within the first year. Modeled on institutions such as Singapore’s national AI office and Egypt’s AI council, the body would be mandated to coordinate policy, enforce standards and monitor compliance across both public and private sectors.
The strategy also takes a clear stance on data sovereignty. It proposes the development of “GhanaChat,” a government-backed large language model trained on public-sector data and mandated for use across ministries. The aim is to reduce reliance on foreign AI platforms for sensitive workflows and limit the exposure of confidential government information to external systems.
That position reflects growing concern among policymakers in emerging markets about control over data flows and the strategic implications of AI dependence. It also aligns with broader efforts to localize digital infrastructure and build domestic capabilities across cloud, connectivity and data services.
Still, analysts caution that execution will determine whether Ghana’s ambitions translate into measurable gains. In a recent pilot assessment by the African AI Governance Index, Ghana scored 35.7, placing it in the “emerging” category and below several continental peers. The gap, according to the index, lies less in vision than in regulatory follow-through.
Key enablers will include the passage and enforcement of the proposed Data Protection Bill 2025, the timely establishment and funding of the Responsible AI Authority, and ensuring that planned investments in compute infrastructure incorporate data sovereignty safeguards.
Ghana’s government has already secured cabinet approval for the strategy and completed foundational governance diagnostics, steps that industry observers say often prove more difficult than drafting policy itself. The next phase – implementation – will require coordination across ministries, regulators, academia and private-sector stakeholders.
For countries across Africa racing to define their role in the global AI economy, Ghana’s approach offers a test case: whether a strategy grounded in explicit targets, institutional design and sovereignty considerations can move faster from policy to practice.
