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A data analytics and artificial intelligence specialist has welcomed Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology’s (KNUST) decision to mandate AI courses for all students but warned the policy will not translate into economic advantage without legislation, infrastructure, and commercial application. Dr. Eugene Frimpong called the initiative a very good strategy for a science driven university when speaking to The High Street Journal, but noted that KNUST is likely to be ahead of the country given the absence of a cohesive national AI strategy. He argued that artificial intelligence (AI) education, if treated as a standalone literacy exercise, creates a delivery gap. The mandate should be supported by enabling law in the same way cybersecurity is being legislated, he said, underlining that AI depends on constant electricity and broadband connectivity, conditions that are not guaranteed at national scale. Dr. Frimpong mapped the policy to broader implementation failures in the digital economy. He cited lack of political will and unfunded policies that remain on paper without appropriation. Ghana must begin extracting return on investment from the digitalization stack, including the national identification (ID) system, e government platforms, and public sector automation, by feeding those data assets into regulated AI systems that drive productivity. He warned that Ghana will miss the commercial moment if AI is taught in abstraction rather than embedded in local problem spaces such as agriculture, healthcare logistics, urban planning, and resource governance. He pointed to Kenya’s use of AI in agriculture as evidence that economic value emerges only when AI is tethered to sector demands. On market effects, he said Ghana could become a digital coast for remote AI hiring by foreign firms but cautioned that without incentives for local adoption, the country risks accelerating a new brain drain cycle. He referenced the United States (U.S.) CHIPS Act as a model for tax based incentives to stimulate private sector AI deployment. He argued that a one size fits all course architecture is inefficient for business outcomes, insisting that AI curricula must diverge by discipline, with agriculture, medicine, engineering, and social sciences receiving domain specific application paths. He called for year one impact measurement and ethics controls to prevent academic abuse and unsafe data practices. “KNUST is likely to be ahead of the country given the absence of a cohesive national AI strategy,” Dr. Frimpong told The High Street Journal. Dr. Frimpong said the KNUST mandate places Ghana on a necessary runway but stressed that the country must start and be prepared to run if the move is to produce competitive AI capacity rather than symbolic compliance.
