Ghana’s national computer emergency response team logged more than 3,500 cyber incidents in the first three months of 2026 alone — and the government is now betting that a formal cooperation programme with Italy can help close the gap between the country’s ambitious digital economy aspirations and its rapidly deteriorating threat landscape.
Communications Minister Samuel Nartey George announced the deepened partnership at a stakeholder workshop in Accra this week, convened jointly with Italy’s Ambassador to Ghana, Laura Ranalli, Cyber Security Authority Director General Divine Selease Agbeti, and Matteo Lucchetti, Director of Italy’s Cyber 4.0 Cybersecurity Competence Center. The workshop focused on implementing Ghana’s National Cybersecurity Policy and Strategy, structured around three pillars: building nationwide awareness of the policy, strengthening the operational capabilities of public and private institutions, and advancing Ghana’s standing in international cybersecurity forums. Participants will consolidate their findings into a formal report of actionable recommendations to guide the two countries’ ongoing collaboration.
The numbers behind the urgency are stark. Between 2019 and 2025, Ghana lost more than $3 billion to cybercrime, according to figures cited at the workshop. In the first nine months of 2025 alone, losses reached 19 million cedis — approximately $1.7 million — marking a 17% increase over the same period in 2024, according to the Cyber Security Authority. The 3,500 incidents recorded in Q1 2026 included escalating malware activity, ransomware attempts, and attacks targeting critical information infrastructure. Authorities have responded with coordinated enforcement operations since January, resulting in multiple arrests tied to online fraud and identity theft networks.
The Partnership in Details
The Italian partnership is not a new relationship being announced at a ceremony. It has institutional roots. Cyber 4.0, a Rome-based cybersecurity competence centre funded by the Italian government, formally presented the Ghana-Italy cooperation programme in December 2025 at a national conference organised by Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its National Cybersecurity Agency. Lucchetti said at that event that the programme is designed to support Ghana in implementing its national cybersecurity strategy, strengthen the technical skills of local professionals, and promote Ghana’s participation in key international forums through fellowships and specialised seminars. The April 2026 workshop in Accra is the programme’s first major in-country activation.
The framing from both governments positions this as strategic alignment rather than aid. Ghana scored 99.27 out of 100 in the ITU’s Global Cybersecurity Index 2024 — close to Italy’s perfect score — placing it among the highest-ranked countries on the continent. That ranking reflects the strength of Ghana’s legal and institutional architecture: the Cybersecurity Act of 2020, the Data Protection Commission, and the Cyber Security Authority’s enforcement mandate. What the Index does not capture is the operational gap between policy sophistication and on-the-ground response capacity, which is precisely where the Cyber 4.0 programme is designed to contribute.
Minister George has been building Ghana’s cybersecurity profile as a layer of the country’s broader digital ambitions. His ministry has laid out 15 new laws to support the digital economy, strengthen cybersecurity, and enhance data protection, with plans to submit them to parliament in phases. The MTN Ghana MoU signed at Mobile World Congress 2025, which earmarked cybersecurity as one of four areas for the One Million Coders programme, reflects a broader strategy to embed secure digital practices into workforce development from the ground up. The Italy partnership adds a distinct dimension: direct technical capacity transfer from one of Europe’s leading cybersecurity institutions into Ghana’s public agencies and industry forums.
The critical question, as always, is what happens after the report. Ghana’s record on translating high-profile international cybersecurity collaborations into durable operational change is mixed. The Cyber Security Authority has previously awarded licences and accreditations to 51 cybersecurity providers — a genuine regulatory milestone — but Surf Shark data placed Ghana ninth globally for data breaches in 2024, with a 997% increase in the first quarter compared to the prior quarter. A high ITU ranking and a growing licensed ecosystem have not, so far, translated into fewer incidents.
George acknowledged the challenge directly at the workshop. “Cybersecurity is a shared responsibility. It requires collaboration across governments, industry, academia, and international partners,” he said. The statement is accurate, but it also sidesteps a harder question: whether Ghana’s public institutions have the budget, the technical staffing, and the internal coordination mechanisms to absorb and act on the knowledge that Italy’s Cyber 4.0 is prepared to transfer. The Accra workshop included members of Ghana’s Joint Cybersecurity Committee and representatives from the industry forum — the right people in the room. Whether their deliberations produce a report that gathers dust or one that drives procurement, training cycles, and incident response upgrades will depend on political will and treasury support that no partnership framework can guarantee.
Broader Impacts of The Partnership
For the broader West African context, the Ghana-Italy engagement carries some signal value. Ghana occupies an unusual position in the regional cybersecurity landscape — it has invested more seriously than most of its neighbours in formal frameworks and regulatory infrastructure, yet continues to haemorrhage capital to cybercrime at rates that undermine the credibility of those frameworks. If the Cyber 4.0 programme demonstrably improves response times, reduces successful attacks on critical infrastructure, or lifts the technical capabilities of the Computer Emergency Response Team, it will become a model that other African governments — many of which lack even Ghana’s foundational architecture — can reference in their own bilateral conversations with European partners.
Italy’s interest in Ghana as a cyber cooperation partner reflects a strategic logic that goes beyond goodwill. As Africa’s digital infrastructure scales — driven by fintech expansion, cloud adoption, and digital public goods — the risk of cascading cross-border incidents grows. A breach in a Ghanaian financial institution can propagate across the West African payments corridors that increasingly link Accra to Lagos, Abidjan, and Dakar. European governments with economic and diplomatic exposure across the region have a direct interest in the resilience of that infrastructure. The Cyber 4.0 programme in Ghana is, in that sense, as much about protecting Italian and European digital interests in West Africa as it is about capacity transfer.
The next meaningful checkpoint will be the publication of the workshop’s action report, and whether its recommendations produce measurable results before the cycle of diplomatic announcements begins again.
