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I barely do this but I beg any Ghanaian to read the following write up by Chris-Vincent Agyapong. Bookmark, share etc cos wtf 😳
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“Ghana's NITA Bill 2025: How a Government That Cannot Fix Potholes Wants to Certify Your Keyboard Strokes
There is a particular brand of Ghanaian governance that operates on a simple, well-rehearsed logic: identify the one sector in which ordinary young people, without connections, without family money, without a politician uncle are actually building something for themselves, and then erect a magnificent bureaucratic tollbooth right in the middle of it.
The National Information Technology Authority Bill, 2025 currently making its way through Ghana's legislative machinery with the quiet confidence of a document probably written by a majority of people who have never debugged a line of code in their lives is precisely that tollbooth. It is, in its 105 sections and accompanying Schedule, one of the most breathtaking exercises in regulatory overreach this country has produced in recent memory. And given our regulatory track record, that is genuinely saying something.
The ICT sector is the one industry where a boy from Ashaiman, or, like my friend from Pulima, Aliu Wahab, with a second-hand laptop and a YouTube tutorial, can compete with someone whose father went to Achimota. It is the one space where talent, not tribe; skill, not surname; output, not old-boy network, still carries meaningful weight. It is, bluntly, the only functioning meritocracy left in Ghana's economic life.
And our government, with the NITA Bill 2025 has decided that this is precisely the sector that requires the most elaborate regulatory architecture since the tale of Moses coming down from Sinai with the Ten Commandments.
The Absurdity of Section 46: Certifying Everyone, Everywhere, Always
Let us begin with what is, without competition, the most extraordinary provision in this bill. Section 46(1) states, in plain and unambiguous terms:
"A person shall not be appointed as an ICT professional in a public or private institution unless that person is certified by the Authority."
Read that again. Public or private.
This is not a provision that limits itself to government systems handling national security data. This is not a narrow carve-out for critical infrastructure. This is a provision that means the software developer at a startup in Osu, the data analyst at a logistics firm in Tema, the web designer freelancing from her bedroom in Kumasi, all of them, every single one must first obtain certification from a government authority before they can lawfully be employed.
Who dreamed this up? Under what theory of governance does it make sense for the government of Ghana which cannot consistently process a DVLA licence within six months, which spent years and hundreds of millions on a national identification system that still cannot talk to the health insurance database to position itself as the certifying gatekeeper for an entire profession across the entire economy?
And here is the delicious irony that the framers of this bill seem constitutionally incapable of perceiving: the government's own ICT record is the single most compelling argument against giving it certification authority over anyone. You do not hand the keys of the wine cellar to the person who has been drinking the wine.
Politicians: The One Profession That Needs Certification Most, and Gets It Least
Since we are on the subject of certification, let us pause to consider who in this country is not required to demonstrate any competence whatsoever before being handed consequential power over millions of lives.
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