Ghana must build the infrastructure to create artificial intelligence products locally or risk repeating its  cocoa trade pattern, a University of Ghana researcher warned at an MTN partnership launch.

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Speaking at Wednesday’s signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between MTN Ghana and the University of Ghana for the Tekyerema Pa AI Hackathon ’26 in Accra, Professor Isaac Wiafe, lead researcher at the university’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab, said the country risked “exporting knowledge and then importing intelligence” if it failed to build its own AI capacity.

Wiafe drew a direct comparison to Ghana’s cocoa industry, which produces and exports raw beans only to import higher-value finished  chocolate. He argued the same pattern could take hold in AI if Ghana keeps supplying the talent and data used to build systems developed elsewhere while depending on imported AI products and services.

He identified talent, data and computing capacity as the three pillars needed to drive AI development, and said Ghana’s ability to compete in the AI economy would hinge on strengthening all three at home rather than treating AI adoption alone as sufficient progress.

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MTN Ghana’s Chief Digital Officer, Ibrahim Misto, framed the new partnership in similar terms, saying the collaboration was designed to move past theoretical discussion of AI and toward building solutions for concrete local problems rather than simply consuming intelligence built elsewhere.

The warning echoes arguments Wiafe made in an earlier inaugural lecture, “Why AI is Irrelevant to Ghana: Reclaiming Our Future through Human-Centred Transformation,” in which he said the technology would deliver little value to the country unless deliberately designed around local languages, priorities and problems. He has previously called for Ghana to invest in what he describes as distributed intelligence ecosystems rather than depending on systems built abroad.

Tekyerema Pa itself is an established initiative of the university’s Human-Computer Interaction Lab, built around developing AI tools for Ghanaian languages, including Akan speech-recognition models to help people with speech impairments communicate. An earlier edition of the hackathon drew 48 teams from 28 universities, including one team from Kenya.

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The new MoU is intended to extend that work by pairing MTN’s resources with the university’s research base as the 2026 edition of the hackathon takes shape.