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The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin, has said that the ultimate sovereignty of the country will remain constrained if it fails to exercise firm control over its data and digital systems.
He said the meaning of sovereignty had evolved beyond territorial integrity and political independence to include control over identity, data and digital infrastructure.
“In this century, we must recognise that digital dignity and digital self-determination are equally important to the strength of our Republic. To protect our data is to protect our identity; to protect our identity is to protect our sovereignty.
“In this digital century, safeguarding sovereignty in all its forms may well be the highest expression of patriotism,” the Speaker said.
This was contained in a speech read on his behalf at a Data Protection Week conference in Accra yesterday.
It was organised by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) on the theme: “Your data, Your identity: Building trust in Ghana’s digital future”.
Participants included policymakers, regulators, industry players, technology experts, academics and civil society stakeholders who deliberated on strengthening data governance and safeguarding digital rights.
The Speaker said that in the digital century, national memory increasingly resided in databases, biometric systems, financial platforms and communication networks rather than in traditional cultural symbols.
“If a nation cannot determine how its data is collected, stored, analysed and shared, then its sovereignty becomes limited in ways that may not always be visible, but are deeply consequential,” he added.
Mr Bagbin, therefore, called for deliberate digital governance anchored in Ghanaian values, stronger data protection institutions and accountable artificial intelligence systems that respect national laws and dignity.
The Minister of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations, Samuel Nartey George, also said that data had become a critical national resource underpinning identity, economic participation and digital growth.
He announced reforms to strengthen data protection laws, clarify cross-border data rules and enhance enforcement amid emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
The minister also said that Cabinet had approved a National AI Strategy, and a new biometric-verified SIM registration exercise linked to the Ghana Card to improve security, accountability and digital governance.
The Executive Director of the DPC, Dr Arnold Kavaarpuo, said discussions would centre around the human consequences of weak data governance, and recounted a mobile loan app abuse case to illustrate how personal data could be weaponised.
He said trust in the digital economy required deliberate regulation, anticipatory risk design, and leadership that treated data stewardship as a fiduciary obligation, not mere compliance.
The President of the Ghana Association of Privacy Professionals (GAPP), Emmanuel Gadasu, distinguished between statutory compliance under the Data Protection Act and a deeper moral duty owed to data subjects.
He, therefore, called for empathy, plain-language transparency, empowered data protection supervisors and restraint in collecting special category data.
For his part, the Chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Information and Communications, Abed-Nego Lamangin Bandin, emphasised the need to align regulation with rapidly evolving digital ecosystems, assuring stakeholders that Parliament would rigorously scrutinise proposed amendments to strengthen the legal framework.
