The National Information Technology Agency’s (NITA) new bill has proposed a jail term for Phone repairers and software developers without a license.
According to the NITA Bill 2025 cited, proposed a 10-year jail term for Phone repairers and software developers without a license.
The NITA bill, if passed by parliament, seeks to decide who can build Ghana’s digital future, who can work in it, and who can go to prison for touching a keyboard without permission.
In a post shared by Hubert Tieku Esq, he wrote, The NITA Bill 2025 mandates EVERY IT worker in Ghana licensed before they can work, even in private companies.
It also:
- taxes IT companies on revenue (not profit)
- jails unlicensed tech founders for up to 10 YEARS
- restricts IT licences to companies wholly owned by Ghanaians, potentially driving away foreign investment to other African countries like Rwanda & Kenya.
- The Bill does many other awful and archaic things
This may be the biggest anti-tech bill Ghana has seen in years”.
Also, in a detailed post shared by BlackStarPatriot on X, he wrote, “Parliament is about to vote on a bill that decides who can build Ghana’s digital future, who can work in it, and who can go to prison for touching a keyboard without permission. This is the real threat picture in the NITA Bill.
Section 35 says you cannot “engage in a business or related activity in the ICT sector” without a licence from NITA. That sweeps in everyone from a one person dev shop in Kumasi to a cloud provider in Accra. Operate without a licence and the law treats you as a criminal, not a startup.
The penalty is not a slap on the wrist. The bill puts fines of 2,000 to 5,000 penalty units and up to two years in prison on the table for running an unlicensed ICT business. We are not talking about fraud or cybercrime. We are talking about writing code and shipping products without a government permission slip.
Now add section 46. No public or private institution can appoint an “ICT professional” unless that person is certified by NITA. If you run a fintech, a hospital, a logistics startup or even a church IT desk, every systems admin and developer is supposed to queue for one Authority’s certificate before you can legally hire them.
Layer section 90 on top. Providing ICT services without a valid licence, or claiming to be a certified professional when you are not, carries the same criminal penalties. You have just turned self taught devs and student freelancers into a compliance risk that can carry jail time.
Section 37 closes the trap. Only Ghanaian citizens and entities “wholly owned” by citizens may even apply for ICT licences. That is not gentle local content. It is a full lockout of foreign or mixed ownership from the licensed ICT space. The same government that markets Ghana as a digital hub is writing “locals only” into law.
If you have ever sat in a combat information center or a continuity/control war room, you know what this kind of design does. You create a single point of failure by handing one Authority control over who can operate, who can work, and who can be punished. When that Authority is slow, captured or simply wrong, the whole ecosystem pays the recovery cost.
NITA should exist. We need standards for public ICT, a national digital architecture, and real oversight of critical systems. What we do not need is a digital command economy where every ICT business and professional sits behind a gate that opens only when a central office says so.
A sane fix is on the table. Limit compulsory licences to clearly defined critical infrastructure. Limit compulsory certification to people working on those systems. Replace the citizens-only rule with minimum local equity plus strong local content and skills transfer. Strip criminal penalties out of ordinary licensing failures.
If Parliament passes the bill in its current form, the recovery time for the damage will be measured in years of lost investment and talent flight. The House still has a window to correct course. MPs on the Communications Committee should not treat this as another routine bill. It is a structural change to how Ghana’s digital economy lives or dies”.
Meanwhile, NITA issued a press statement on May 22, 2026, disclosing that the proposed NITA Bill seeks to modernise Ghana’s digital governance architecture in response to emerging technologies and cybersecurity concerns.
NITA disclosed that the bill aims to address issues including artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, digital identity ecosystems, cross-border digital transactions and digital trust services.
According to them, the legislative process remained transparent and constitutionally compliant, adding that the bill is still undergoing stakeholder consultations, would require Cabinet consideration, Attorney-General review, parliamentary scrutiny under Article 106 of the Constitution and eventual presidential assent before becoming enforceable law.
See the post below:
Parliament is about to vote on a bill that decides who can build Ghana’s digital future, who can work in it, and who can go to prison for touching a keyboard without permission. This is the real threat picture in the NITA Bill.
— BlackStarPatriot (@1957_GHPatriot) May 22, 2026
Section 35 says you cannot “engage in a business or… pic.twitter.com/rlIjUSplRM
