Ghana needs national data cleanup to unlock AI potential –Founder of GradePoint AI

Founder and Chief Executive Officer of GradePoint AI, Dr Gillian Hammah, has called for a nationwide data-cleaning exercise, urging the government to prioritise the digitisation and standardisation of public records to enable Ghana to fully harness artificial intelligence (AI).

She says the country’s ability to benefit from AI will remain limited if critical government information continues to be stored in paper files and fragmented databases across public institutions.

Speaking at the Step Up Executive Breakfast Series, Dr Hammah proposed a presidentially endorsed initiative requiring every government ministry to organise, digitise and harmonise its records within three to six months.

She believes such an intervention would provide the foundation for developing AI solutions capable of addressing Ghana’s developmental challenges.

“I would advocate for a national data cleanup that is endorsed by the President to say, every ministry in the next three months or six months, we are going to go through, we’re going to assign people, and we’re going to start putting our data in order,” she said.

Dr Hammah explained that many public institutions still rely heavily on paper-based documentation, making it difficult for AI systems to access and process the information needed to develop solutions.

“Everything is paper. AI can’t do anything with paper,” she stressed.

She said the exercise must go beyond digitisation to ensure that information held by different government agencies is accurate and consistent.

Using personal records as an example, she questioned whether details such as names and dates of birth held by the National Identification Authority would correspond with records in other government institutions.

According to her, inconsistencies across public databases could undermine the reliability of information used to train and develop AI systems.

Dr Hammah also called for Ghana to make relevant datasets available to international AI developers, arguing that the benefits of such information should extend beyond the country’s borders.

She cited sickle cell disease as an example, explaining that sharing relevant health information could help foreign-developed AI systems better understand conditions affecting Black populations, including Ghanaians living abroad.

“Yes, Ghana should have its own models, that we should be able to build solutions that are for Ghanaians, but we also need to be willing to share our data and actually share it with the foreign models,” she said.

She maintained that Ghana’s AI ambitions should combine responsible data-sharing arrangements with the development of locally relevant solutions.

“The only way to do that is to start with cleaning up our data,” she added.

The Step Up Executive Breakfast Series, organised by Step Up Business School, was held under the theme, “The AI-Powered Project Leader: How to Lead, Deliver & Stay Relevant in the Age of AI.”