Bright Simons, Honorary Vice President of IMANI Africa, has argued that Ghana’s celebrated “digitalization” agenda has become a convenient guise for what he describes as “State Enchantment.”
He explained that astute entrepreneurs in Ghana quickly recognized the opportunity and strategically positioned themselves to benefit from it. As a result, they have received tens of millions of dollars in public funds.
Simons noted that each deal was accompanied by a seemingly credible justification. The need for the project was elaborately framed, and the financial terms were presented as highly favorable to Ghana, thereby legitimizing the transactions.
“The political might of the Vice President was deployed to clear all the usual checks and balances. A specific group of companies with the right connections in his office dominated these deals. In several instances, the World Bank became the source of cash.
“Some of these projects now constitute a clear and present danger to Ghana’s fiscal stability and must be reformed to save money for the Republic. Doing so, however, requires a sound understanding of how these risks built up and how in its commercial dealings with these darling companies, Ghana somehow ended up the sucker in almost every scenario”.
Bright Simons
Simons also mentioned that at the moment, his team completed an initial assessment for their study on the World Bank’s funding of the digitalization of the Office of the Registrar of Companies (ORC), previously known as the Registrar General’s Department.
He noted that this work is part of a broader investigation into the World Bank’s portfolio. “It was exhilarating to see some of the same patterns we have identified in other World Bank financing contexts surface with such precision”.
He pointed out that a fully functional system, developed by Crimson Logic (originally conceptualized by GCNet) and funded by the World Bank, only requires upgrading and transitioning to an internal IT team.
Simons stated that however, it has been “strategically declared redundant” due to the expiration of the maintenance contract with Crimson Logic. “Just because a group of companies favored by the sitting Vice President’s office has been identified to take over”.
He also revealed that the same companies behind the controversial “ride-sharing” platforms and “AI” projects at ECG are now set to replace the e-Registrar platform, which has been intentionally neglected.
Simons Slams ORC E-Services, Cites Political Influence
Bright Simons further stated that despite the significant World Bank funding, using the ORC’s e-services remains a challenge as e-filings and public searches are still unreliable.
He noted that rather than seeing one contract through to successful completion, the trend is to create opportunities for politically connected IT contractors.
He pointed out that services like business name searches and registrations, which are simple in many African countries, continue to be major obstacles for businesses in Ghana due to frequent downtimes.
Simons maintained that currently, even creating an account on the e-portal is often not functional.
“Margins comes into the picture differently, through its ICPS subsidiary. It is responsible for ensuring that searches for company records work seamlessly by converting all paper records into electronic format.
“Our team noticed upon testing that the public search function has been broken for a while now. We decided to probe. We confirmed with internal sources that the backend system, accessible only to ORC personnel, also doesn’t function when searching for historical corporate records”.
Bright Simons
He noted that the Margins contract aimed to ensure the electronic formatting of corporate registration and filing records dating back to the 1st Republic.
He pointed out that despite substantial World Bank funding for this project, he pointed out that the ORC still cannot provide historical searches due to peculiar claims about equipment failures caused by power surges, among other reasons.
Simons emphasized that, in short, this is yet another World Bank e-Transform project for which Ghana has borrowed millions of dollars with the goal of improving the business climate through world-class corporate registry services.
He, however, lamented that it fails to deliver due to a political economy and governance environment that does not support strong project accountability. “As we keep saying, something needs to give”.
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