1. Readers know my position that a glorious narrative around "digitalisation" in Ghana became a massive cover for what I call, "State Enchantment".
2. Some smart entrepreneurs in Ghana saw the signs early and positioned well to ride the wave. They have been rewarded with tens of millions of dollars of public money.
3. In every case, the deal justification was solid. A need was elaborately established. Financial terms were presented as great for Ghana.
4. The political might of the Vice President was deployed to clear all the usual checks and balances. A specific group of companies with the right connections in his office dominated these deals.
5. In several instances, the World Bank became the source of cash.
6. Some of these projects now constitute a clear and present danger to Ghana's fiscal stability and must be reformed to save money for the Republic. Doing so, however, requires a sound understanding of how the these risks built up and how in its commercial dealings with these darling companies, Ghana somehow ended up the sucker in almost every scenario.
7. I have detailed many of these schemes in longform essays on my blog:
brightsimons.com so readers are encouraged to explore.
8. Today, our team wrapped up an initial assessment for our study into World Bank funding of the digitalisation of the Office of Registrar of Companies (ORC), formerly known as the Registrar General's Department. This work forms part of our wide-ranging investigation into the World Bank's portfolio. It was exhilarating seeing some of the same patterns we have identified in other World Bank financing contexts surface with such precision.
9. A functionally working system built by Crimson Logic (initially conceptualised by GCNet) and paid for by the World Bank that simply needs upgrading and transitioning to an internal IT team has been "strategically declared redundant" on the grounds that a maintenance contract with Crimson Logic has expired. Just because a group of companies favoured by the sitting Vice President's office has been identified to take over.
10. These are the same companies behind the strange "ride-sharing" platforms and "artificial intelligence" projects at the state-owned electricity utility, ECG, we have mentioned previously following their launch to great fanfare by the Veep. These darling companies have been primed to create a greenfield multimillion-dollar system to supplant the e-Registrar platform that has been systematically neglected and allowed to deprecate faster than necessary.
11. Despite all the World Bank money spent, one still struggles to use the ORC's e-services. E-filings and public searches remain erratic. Clearly, rather than see one contract through to a successful conclusion, the tendency is to clear the path for politically favoured IT contractors.
12. E-portal services like business name search and registration that are a breeze in many African countries remain a massive hurdle for businesses in Ghana due to frequent downtimes. Nowadays, even e-portal account creation doesn't work.
13. Margins comes into the picture differently, through its ICPS subsidiary. It is responsible for ensuring that searches for company records work seamlessly by converting all paper records into electronic format.
14. Our team noticed upon testing that the public search function has been broken for a while now. We decided to probe. We confirmed with internal sources that the backend system, accessible only to ORC personnel, also doesn't function when searching for historical corporate records. The scope of the Margins contract was to ensure electronic formatting of corporate registration and filing records dating back to the 1st Republic.
15. Despite significant World Bank funding for this project, the ORC still can't deliver historical searches due to rather odd claims about equipment failures due to power surges, etc.
16. In short, we have yet another World Bank e-Transform project for which Ghana has borrowed millions of dollars with the goal of improving the business climate through world-class corporate registry services failing to deliver because the political economy and governance climate do not favour strong project accountability. As we keep saying, something needs to give.