Bright Simons proposes $13m civil service AI assistant as alternative to Ghana’s $270m GhanaChat plan

Vice-President and head of Research at the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, Bright Simons has proposed a cheaper alternative to Ghana’s planned US$270 million GhanaChat project, arguing that a sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) assistant for the civil service could be a more practical starting point for the country’s AI ambitions. In a post on X, Mr Simons questioned the rationale for developing a national AI platform to compete with global services such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude when existing models could potentially support government operations at a lower cost.