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THE RIGHT TO KNOW AND THE DUTY TO PROTECT

The recent public controversy surrounding the reported GH¢49.7 million expenditure on the evacuation of Ghanaians from South Africa raises important questions about transparency, accountability and the protection of personal data. Following a Right to Information (RTI) request, records relating to the evacuation have become the subject of public scrutiny, with reported discrepancies in the documentation and expenditure. Personal information relating to individual evacuees, including names, dates of birth, passport numbers, signatures and professions , has also appeared in media coverage. There can be little disagreement about the public’s legitimate interest in knowing how government resources are utilised. The Right to Information Act, 2019 (Act 989 ), provides an important legal framework for promoting transparency and holding public institutions accountable. Indeed, the reported discrepancies demonstrate why access to public information is essential in a democratic society. Howev...
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CONTESTING AI DECISIONS IN COURT: PUTTING ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE TEST

  How do you contest a decision when no one will explain how it was reached? Consider a hypothetical case. Anokyewaa graduates with first-class honours and applies for a government-funded postgraduate scholarship. The state agency administering the scheme receives tens of thousands of applications. She is not selected. Her letter says she “did not meet the required threshold.” It gives no score and no reasons. She later finds that several successful applicants had weaker academic records. That alone does not establish unfairness: academic results may not have been the only criterion. But she cannot find out what else counted or why her application fell short. Anokyewaa files a request under the Right to Information Act, 2019 (Act 989), asking how her application was assessed. The agency replies that the selection was made by an automated artificial intelligence (AI) system. She now knows that AI was involved. She still does not know what it measured, what score she receive...
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WHEN AI BECOMES THE DEFENDANT: THE JUDGE’S QUANDARY

  INTRODUCTION Artificial intelligence is moving beyond assisting human decision-makers to making decisions on its own. In the situation considered here, the system does not merely recommend, rank, score, flag or predict an outcome for a human to accept or reject. It makes the operative decision itself, without human review . When such a decision is challenged in court, a familiar judicial problem takes an unfamiliar form. The institution that deployed the system may still be the defendant, but no human actor made or approved the decision under challenge. This is the sense in which AI becomes the subject of litigation : not because the system acquires legal personality or literally becomes a defendant, but because the court must determine whether its decision can be understood, tested and justified sufficiently to withstand scrutiny under the rule of law . The difficulty is practical. When a decision affects a person’s rights, obligations or interests, that person may chal...
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BAD DATA CANNOT BE FIXED BY A GOOD ALGORITHM: WHY DATA QUALITY WILL DETERMINE GHANA'S AI FUTURE

  INTRODUCTION Ghana's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (2025–2035) reflects an ambitious vision for the country's digital future. It seeks to harness artificial intelligence to drive economic growth, improve public service delivery, stimulate innovation, and position Ghana as a leading participant in Africa's emerging AI ecosystem. The strategy rightly recognises that achieving these objectives will require investments in skills, infrastructure, research, governance, and institutional capacity. Among its most important insights is the recognition that data is a strategic asset . The strategy places considerable emphasis on data governance, digital public infrastructure, local language datasets, and the broader data ecosystems required to support AI development and deployment. This reflects an important reality: artificial intelligence cannot function without data. Every AI system, whether deployed in healthcare, agriculture, education, finance, or government, ...
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