Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, has welcomed President John Dramani Mahama’s decision to terminate the controversial Strategic Mobilisation Limited (SML) contract, describing it as both a necessary relief and a lesson in how Ghana approaches complex digitalisation and policy ventures.
Simons, known for his analytical work on governance and technology policy, said the decision confirms long-held concerns about the SML deal’s inefficiency and lack of verifiable impact on Ghana’s revenue mobilisation efforts.
His remarks revisit the fierce national debate that once pitched activists, academics, and industry experts against each other over the project’s value.
“It is reported that the President has finally ordered the termination of the SML agreement. Sigh of relief,” he stated, adding that despite the spirited exchanges that surrounded the matter, the facts now stand settled.
“People will recall the spirited debate over whether SML’s work made any contributions to stemming tax-revenue loss in Ghana.
“Activists were pitted against professors. Data became a battlefield. My view then and now is that SML is a perfect example of how policy analysis, as well as callings like investigative journalism, vindicates interdisciplinary thinking”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
He argued that the report by the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) has provided conclusive evidence that SML’s operations did not result in measurable gains to state revenue, thereby validating earlier scepticism from civil society and policy analysts.
“The Special Prosecutor’s report should emphatically settle the dispute,” Simons said, noting that the findings reaffirm the need for evidence-based governance and independent scrutiny.
Simons further contended that SML represents “a deeper structural issue,” within Ghana’s policymaking ecosystem – a tendency to embrace grand digitalisation schemes without due diligence or transparency. He drew parallels between SML and other costly initiatives like the LHIMS/GHIMS projects, which also promised transformative results but delivered little.
He questioned whether Ghana’s political and bureaucratic class would extract any meaningful lessons from these experiences. According to him, national learning remains a critical but often neglected aspect of governance in Ghana, warning that the absence of “reflective learning leads to cyclical policy blunders.”
“Will digital initiatives be subject to proper consultative, open, and transparent governance reviews by disinterested parties before large amounts of money are ploughed into them?”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
Overreliance on The Big Four
Bright Simons also criticised the government’s overreliance on global audit and consulting giants – Deloitte, KPMG, PwC, and Ernst & Young – in sensitive inquiries.
He observed that while these firms possess technical competence, they often operate under constraints that compromise their impartiality when “they are often called upon to conduct investigations with outcomes that could embarrass powerful people.”
He argued that the role such firms play should be limited for the best possible outcome, avoiding contact with the interests of powerful people like those doling out the jobs the Big 4 firms need to survive in a tight market like Ghana.
“It is clear that they should be confined to fact-finding and technical analysis and not be asked to make recommendations and conclusions in policy and politically sensitive matters. We put such firms in an unwinnable situation if we do.
“If you stretch them to produce recommendations, etc., they start being, as the Special Prosecutor, called it, ‘placatory’ towards power”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
Simons noted that the same challenge was evident in previous national reviews, including the Development Bank Ghana case, and now again with the SML investigation, where firms appeared reluctant to confront entrenched power dynamics head-on.
The IMANI Vice President also highlighted a recurring pattern in which multinational brands are used to lend artificial credibility to questionable deals.
Citing the SML case, he noted that its association with Coctena was presented as a mark of legitimacy – an approach he likened to the earlier controversies surrounding the 5G National Infrastructure Company (NGIC) arrangement.
Simons criticised what he called “state enchantment” – a political tendency to oversell projects as transformative while neglecting their underlying inefficiencies and weak accountability. He lamented that Ghana’s elites often remain passive in the face of such patterns, thereby undermining meaningful reform.
“We arrive at a familiar point. I know I sound like a broken record. But the truth is that no society can advance if its elites vacate the public space and fail to constitute ‘critical audiences’ for policy-intensive matters – if they fail to track the lessons of public decision-making and put national learning to use”
Bright Simons, Vice President of IMANI Africa
He urged civic and academic actors to sustain oversight and insist on institutional learning, concluding that Ghana’s progress depends on creating a culture where expertise, transparency, and reflection shape governance.
Without this, he cautioned, the nation risks repeating the same policy failures under different names and administrations.
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