Abstract

When launching the super-app CitizenApp in October 2024, Dr Mahamudu Buwamia, Ghana’s Vice President, already lauded “digital foundations” in both the avant-garde Ghanaian governance and “the 4th Industrial Revolution” (Etefe, 2024). Beyond inter-state conflicts, domestic trends like digital bureaucratisation raise security concerns in a digitising global governance. The article discusses the case of Ghana, as an African state pursuing Estonia’s and China’s pioneering endeavours. It discusses the political repercussions of digitisation beyond merely shaping democratic or authoritarian regimes, and specifically considers three issues: CitizenApp as a digitisation strategy used by the Ghanaian government, the correlation between technology and political changes, and global trends of digital authoritarianism.

CitizenApp - a super-app inscribed in a more comprehensive project of governmental digitisation

This discussion is informed by a reading of Marc Steinberg on “platform capitalism,” called Platform capitalisms and platform cultures (Steinberg, Zhang & Mukherjee, 2025), addressing the particular case of platform capitalism and super-apps, as apps designed for multipurpose use. 

Platform capitalism is of utmost relevance to analyse the recent October 2024 launch of the CitizenApp Data Interoperability System (CADIS). Launched by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, CADIS aimed to provide several governmental services for its users (such as a digital ID, registration of births/deaths, and the change of civil status registration data). The app was notably conceived in the continuity of a long-term process to digitise public services. This has been characterised by launching the GhanaPostGPS app (for registering addresses) and the “Ghana Card”  (a digital ID used as a banking identification document by 18 million people), in addition to further centralising several pre-existing online services via interoperating mechanisms. Hence, in a Foucauldian view of the state apparatus, we notice a shift from traditional apps acting as capillary networks of control to the state-owned app acting as a centralised mechanism. 

Further elaborating on developmental considerations, the Ghanaian government also intends to achieve its digital transition in order to drastically cut off the time loss entailed by bureaucratic slowness, similarly to states such as Estonia. Doing so would create an interconnected network across administrative offices based on a blockchain system, facilitating data-sharing. This process is normally associated with indicators such as the mobile phone penetration rate, i.e., the percentage of a population owning or accessing a mobile device. In Ghana, the mobile phone penetration rate exceeds 135% (presupposing each inhabitant has more than one mobile phone), according to the International Trade Administration. However, the country still lags in network coverage, as affordability and reliability of 3G/4G broadband are not attained yet. As a result, Ghana is ranked 15th out of 47 African countries in its use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT).

Hence, CitizenApp highlights Ghana's efforts to become a leading digitised nation in Africa. By addressing app-related issues and making it accessible to all citizens, the government could achieve its goal of "digital evangelism" and compete with top global players through advanced government apps and online public services, positioning itself for the fourth Industrial Revolution.

Technological and political developments – what prospects for the future of the Ghanaian democracy in light of this digitisation?

Beyond this context, one should address the correlation between the development of this app and current political developments. 

If it is argued that digital media heightens the democratic life of the public sphere by fostering political activism, it has also granted platforms of expression for the political opposition, which instrumentalises them to promote fake news and post-truth politics (Gyekye-Jandoh, M. A., & Hakim Ahmed, A., 2023).

Moreover, this app intervenes at a time when Ghana, as a “democratic bulwark”, is questioned by political observers. State-owned apps in Ghana also enable one to grasp the juncture between the modern state and the digital world. The July 2024 CRU Report on Ghana notably highlights attacks on press freedom, heavy-handed security responses, contested elections, and allegations of corruption in political parties. The latter are symptoms of a “hyper-political competition” that is even more exacerbated in the digital space. As such, given this context, one could already wonder how this new technological innovation could lead to domestic threats and the emulation of these policies by neighbouring states. 

When regionally analysing the area, one has to be aware of the presence of Togo, a country with one of the lowest democracy indexes globally (ranked 121 out of 167 by the Economist Group) and with the undisputed dominance of a single party in a post-dictatorship setting over a superficial opposition. 

A case inscribed in the more global trend of “digital authoritarianism”
To bring a more comprehensive perspective to this analysis, let us now address the global trend of the rise of “digital authoritarianism” (Yayboke & Brannen, 2020). Beyond frontal disinformation and propaganda, more pernicious aspects include the abusive collection of private information, in which CitizenApp is involved, through its active data mining. At a time when private property/ownership is still a defining feature of neoliberal democracies, how can one analyse this phenomenon of the citizen/user being expropriated from sensitive data concerning their existence, as they are shared as a casual commodity and disclosed without the user’s consent? In light of this prospect, a critical meta-question that any observer will have to consider in the future is the actual dynamics of digitisation operated by nation-states across the world, as an acknowledged necessity to modernise their administrations, but as posing a potential threat depending on the domestic and regional political contexts.