The government has called for a more supportive tax and financial environment for young technology entrepreneurs, warning that excessive taxation could undermine the growth of Ghana’s emerging digital economy.
Deputy Chief of Staff for Administration and Finance, Nana Oye Bampoe Addo, said young developers and technology start-ups needed an environment that allowed them to experiment, grow and commercialise their innovations.
She made the call during the opening of the 2026 National ICT Week, held under the theme of opportunities across Ghana’s digital ecosystem.
According to Nana Oye Bampoe Addo, Ghana’s digital transformation would not reach its full potential if young innovators were confronted with excessive financial and regulatory burdens.
“We must create a practical corporate tax and digitalisation regime. We must discourage heavy taxation because this makes it exceedingly difficult for new developers who are youth and startups to scale,” she said.
She observed that many young Ghanaians were turning to technology as a pathway to economic empowerment, particularly amid limited employment opportunities.
The Deputy Chief of Staff said the huge response to the government’s One Million Coders Programme demonstrated the scale of interest among young people in acquiring skills relevant to the global digital economy.
The programme, she noted, attracted 94,000 applications within its first 48 hours and had expanded to 130 centres across Ghana’s 16 regions.
She added that the initiative had subsequently attracted nearly 150,000 registered participants.
“These future pioneers of innovation are using tech as a pathway for economic empowerment,” she said.
Nana Oye Bampoe Addo argued that training alone would not be sufficient to transform Ghana into a competitive digital economy.
She said young people who acquired technology skills must also have access to capital, affordable digital infrastructure, software, cloud services and markets where they could commercialise their ideas.
She pointed to Turkey as an example of a country that had adopted supportive policies for its technology ecosystem.
According to her, Turkey subsidises a significant portion of software licences, cloud hosting and app store commissions for technology businesses.
“Ghana can equally foster a very supportive financial ecosystem for tech. Let us empower these young entrepreneurs,” she said.
She urged government, industry, financial institutions and other stakeholders to develop mechanisms that would help young technology businesses move beyond training and prototypes into commercially sustainable enterprises.
The Deputy Chief of Staff also stressed the importance of stronger collaboration between government, academia and the private sector.
She said such partnerships were necessary to create opportunities for young innovators to access technical expertise, investment, mentorship and markets.
Nana Oye Bampoe Addo said Ghana already had evidence of the creativity of its young people, citing a university student who had developed a low-cost artificial intelligence-powered cocoa disease detection tool.
She said the government was interested in supporting the expansion of such locally developed solutions because they could address practical challenges facing the Ghanaian economy.
Beyond technology entrepreneurship, she said digital platforms were already creating new economic opportunities for Ghanaian content creators.
“Our TikTokers are exporting Ghanaian culture. Our YouTubers are becoming digital educators. Our film industry is also turning these platforms into multi-billion-dollar livelihoods,” she said.
She therefore urged stakeholders to ensure that Ghana’s digital ecosystem was structured to help local talent thrive rather than forcing innovators to seek opportunities elsewhere.
Nana Oye Bampoe Addo said the government’s objective was to create an enabling environment where talent could be discovered, nurtured and taken to scale.
She maintained that Ghana’s young technology entrepreneurs could become a major source of jobs, innovation and economic growth if the right ecosystem was created around them.
