A prominent Ghanaian policy analyst has accused the government of building its US$270 million artificial intelligence plan on computing targets that do not add up, reopening a public debate about how African states should spend scarce money on AI.

Bright Simons, vice-president and head of research at the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, set out his case in a long post on X on Sunday, days after he debated Communication and Digital Technology Minister Samuel Nartey George at a JoyNews forum on AI and the Ghana economy.

The numbers he disputes

Simons said Ghana's national AI strategy gives the country's computing target for 2027 as "1021 FLOPS" and for 2035 as "1025 FLOPS". Read literally, he wrote, that would be about the power of a 1970s desktop computer. He argued the drafters most likely meant 10 to the power of 21 and 10 to the power of 25 operations a second.

Read that way, he said, the 2027 target would need some 200,000 of Nvidia's newest chips, 500 megawatts of power and about US$24 billion, and the US$250 million data centre now being procured would supply only about 1 percent of it. MyJoyOnline, which reported his post, noted that these are his own estimates and would need independent technical and financial checks.

Simons also questioned the running costs. By IMANI's modelling, he said, the budget buys about 2,100 graphics processors and 4.3 megawatts of computing load, which would cost about US$76 million a year to run. "The base case thus implies a subsidy of about US$61 million a year," he wrote.

His alternative is smaller: a secure AI assistant for civil servants using about 144 processors, costing about US$13 million up front and US$6.7 million a year. "That is under a thousandth of the 2027 target, and a far more realistic initial-term strategy," he said.

The minister's case

At the forum on Wednesday, George said the plan was driven by a real risk. He told the audience he had seen analysts in ministers' offices feeding sensitive government material into foreign tools such as ChatGPT and Claude, MyJoyOnline reported.

"That for me represents a critical national risk," he said. He accepted that the proposed national model, known as GhanaChat, would not match the big platforms at first, but said it would improve with use. "I see all the questions that are being raised, very legitimate questions... but I believe that we are on the right track to resolving all of those issues," he said.

President John Mahama announced the package when he launched the strategy in April: US$250 million for an AI computing centre and US$20 million to fund the strategy's rollout, Citi Newsroom reported at the time.

Why it matters for Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is on a similar path. President Mnangagwa launched the National AI Strategy 2026-2030 in March, and The Herald has reported that the government has finalised a National AI Charter and is setting up a regulatory committee and an AI implementation office. This week ZimCitizenNews reported that ICT Minister Tatenda Mavetera said a Cabinet committee had approved the charter and that the government wants an AI Act by the end of next year.

The Ghana debate is about questions Harare will face too: whether to build expensive national computing and home-grown models, or start with smaller tools that keep government data at home, and how to pay for power and running costs once the ribbon is cut.

Sources: Bright Simons on X, 25 Oct 2026: https://x.com/BBSimons/status/2114345388610040042 · MyJoyOnline, 25 Oct 2026 (computing error): https://www.myjoyonline.com/bright-simons-flags-computing-capacity-error-in-ghanas-ai-strategy-and-questions-ghanachat-costs/ · MyJoyOnline (Caleb Ahinakwah), 25 Oct 2026 (subsidy): https://www.myjoyonline.com/ghanachat-data-centre-could-require-61m-annual-subsidy-bright-simons/ · MyJoyOnline, 25 Oct 2026 (alternative): https://www.myjoyonline.com/bright-simons-proposes-13m-civil-service-ai-assistant-as-alternative-to-ghanas-270m-ghanachat-plan/ · MyJoyOnline, 21 Oct 2026 (Minister George at forum): https://www.myjoyonline.com/sam-george-outlines-270m-ghana-ai-investment-cites-risks-of-feeding-government-data-into-foreign-models/ · MyJoyOnline, 21 Oct 2026 (power and water): https://www.myjoyonline.com/bright-simons-questions-sam-george-on-feasibility-of-ghanas-ai-compute-centre-cites-power-and-water-costs/ · Citi Newsroom (Juliana Odame Asare), 24 Apr 2026: https://www.citinewsroom.com/2026/04/mahama-ghana-to-invest-270m-in-ai-computing-centre-strategy-rollout/ · The Herald, 4 Jun 2026: https://www.heraldonline.co.zw/ai-challenge-to-drive-zimbabwes-digital-transformation/ · ZimCitizenNews (Sofia Mapuranga), 23 Oct 2026: https://www.zimcitizennews.com/zimbabwe-approves-national-ai-charter-to-combat-surging-cyber-fraud/

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