Author: Kay Codjoe, Market Research Consultant and Volunteer Associate at the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education

The constitutional concerns surrounding what NITA is currently doing cannot simply be washed away with stakeholder meetings, glossy presentations, or defensive press statements. In fact, the deeper this conversation goes, the more Ghana’s digital governance agenda begins resembling an overcrowded regulatory bazaar where every institution wants a booth, a licence, a fee, a certification framework, and eventually, a slice of economic control.

Because meaningful engagement cannot happen while the most important document remains hidden from the public. The revised second draft of the proposed Bills, supposedly updated after stakeholder consultations, has still not been made public.

Yet that revised draft is precisely what citizens, lawyers, innovators, investors, startups, policy experts and civil society must examine before any serious national conversation can honestly proceed.

Citizens cannot be asked to “engage” blindfolded while the regulatory architecture itself remains concealed behind institutional curtains. At the heart of the controversy is a simple question: Is Ghana building a modern digital economy? Or building a crowded licensing republic?

Globally, the benchmark for emerging economies is becoming clearer. Regulate genuine risk. Protect citizens. Enable innovation. Reduce compliance friction. Create investor certainty. Preserve rights and democratic safeguards.

The OECD’s agile governance principles stress innovation-friendly regulation anchored in proportionality and the rule of law. UNESCO’s AI governance framework equally emphasises human rights, fairness, transparency, privacy, accountability and human oversight. Measured against those standards, Ghana’s current direction appears not merely ambitious but dangerously overbuilt.

The first major defect is mandate collision. At least six different legislative frameworks are now competing over artificial intelligence, cloud governance, cybersecurity, data systems, IoT infrastructure, digital certification and emerging technologies.

NITA wants licensing powers, professional certification powers, technical clearance authority, regulatory sandboxes and enforcement powers. The Cyber Security Authority seeks broad oversight over AI systems, blockchain infrastructure, cloud certification, digital investigations, asset recovery and prosecutorial functions.

The Emerging Technologies framework introduces yet another governance structure over the same frontier technologies. That is not regulatory coordination. It is institutional congestion masquerading as innovation policy.

The second defect is licensing inflation. Healthy digital economies do not suffocate innovation beneath endless permission structures. High-risk sectors may require licensing. Critical infrastructure may require regulation.

National security systems may require strict oversight. Ordinary software development should not feel like applying for a mining concession. Ghana needs more builders, more startups, more coders, more innovators and more digital exporters. Not more bureaucratic checkpoints.

The third defect is fee architecture without economic sensitivity. Act 1080 centralises fee approval processes under lawful parliamentary and ministerial frameworks. So when agencies begin publicly displaying fee ecosystems before clear statutory grounding, constitutional and administrative law questions naturally arise. A gazetted invoice is not automatic constitutional authority.

The fourth defect is over-securitisation. Cybersecurity matters deeply. But once regulators begin combining policing powers, prosecutorial powers, revenue powers, certification powers and surveillance-adjacent functions inside overlapping institutions, democratic safeguards begin weakening dangerously. Even the review summaries themselves quietly warn against blurring the line between civilian regulation and law enforcement expansion.

The fifth defect is weak regulatory hierarchy. Ghana cannot build interconnected national data systems while data protection safeguards remain fragmented beneath competing institutional ambitions. Without clear hierarchy, interoperability becomes confusion, and governance becomes bureaucratic turf warfare. The solution is consolidation, clarity and restraint.

One lead for privacy and AI rights: Data Protection Authority. One lead for cybersecurity resilience: CSA. One lead for public sector ICT standards and interoperability: NITA. One lead for spectrum and telecom infrastructure: NCA. Emerging technologies should be governed through a national policy council, not another statutory empire. Otherwise, the digital economy will not be regulated. It will be ambushed by bureaucracy.