Ghana launches AI community centre to drive digital transformation
Ghana’s quest to lead Africa’s digital transformation agenda has greatly boosted with the opening of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Community Centre in Accra.
The state-of-the-art facility, established by Google, is expected to serve as a hub for innovation, learning and collaboration in AI and emerging technologies.
It will provide students, developers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers with the resources and tools to build cutting-edge solutions.
To help meet the growing demand for AI and digital skills, Google is also distributing 100,000 Google Career Certificate scholarships to students in higher education institutions across Ghana.
These fully funded, self-paced programmes will focus on AI Essentials, Prompting Essentials and other high-growth fields such as IT Support, Data Analytics and Cybersecurity to enable more learners to access job-ready training and build careers in AI and the digital economy.
Inaugurating the centre last Thursday in Accra, the Minister of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovation, Samuel Nartey George, said the centre was “more than just a building,” symbolising a collective vision and a shared commitment to harness the transformative power of technology.
“For years, Africa has been described in terms of its potential. Today, we are no longer speaking in the future tense. We’re building, we’re innovating, and we’re transforming that potential into real, tangible progress here in Africa,” he said.
He explained that establishing the centre sent a clear message that Ghana was actively working to lead in digital innovation on the continent.
Mr George emphasised that digital transformation remained central to Ghana’s national development strategy, stating it was not a luxury but an urgent necessity.
“Digital Transformation is the key to creating sustainable jobs, improving public services, enhancing our global competitiveness and empowering our people to solve problems in ways that are uniquely ours,” he said.
He also stated that the digital economy had become the new engine of global influence, and Ghana was taking deliberate steps to ensure it remained competitive in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Commitment
The Senior Vice-President for Research, Labs and Technology & Society at Google, James Manyika, said Africa was home to some of the most important and inspiring work in AI today.
He affirmed Google's commitment to supporting the next wave of innovation through long-term investment, local partnerships and platforms that help researchers and entrepreneurs build solutions that matter.
For his part, the Vice-President of Engineering and Research at Google, Yossi Matias, said, “the new wave of support reflects our belief in the talent, creativity and ingenuity across the continent.
By building with local communities and institutions, we support solutions rooted in Africa’s realities and built for global impact.”