Before I shipped a single feature on this platform, I built a Pharmacy POS system for a local institution. No revenue. Just a student trying to solve a real problem with the skills I was teaching myself.

Under Section 35 of Ghana's proposed NITA Bill, 2025 — that could land me in prison for up to two years.

Not for hacking. Not for fraud. For building software without a government licence.

This is the reality of what's sitting in Parliament right now. The National Information Technology Authority Bill, 2025 wants to require that:

— Every ICT business and service provider holds a NITA licence before operating (Section 35)

— Every ICT professional holds a NITA-issued certificate before being appointed anywhere — public or private (Section 46)

No certificate from AWS. No degree from KNUST or Legon. A certificate from NITA itself — a body the same bill grants unchecked power to define the criteria for.

Ghana's tech ecosystem raised $127 million in 2024. Fintech grew over 1,600% in a single year. The ICT sector's GDP contribution went from GH¢4.4 billion in 2016 to GH¢21 billion in 2022.

And the response to that growth is to put a government gate at the entrance.

Here's what nobody writing this bill seems to understand: every serious developer in Ghana started by building small things for people around them. A POS here. A school portal there. A church website somewhere. That's not criminal activity — that's how ecosystems grow from the ground up.

The bill doesn't distinguish between a reckless vendor who crashed a government database and a self-taught developer shipping real software from their room. To NITA's framework, we're the same — uncertified, unlicensed, and apparently dangerous.

I'm not against regulation in principle. There are real problems — bad vendors winning government contracts, cybersecurity disasters, unaccountable foreign companies. Those deserve attention.

But the answer to those problems is not to criminalize learning. Not to put a GH¢20,000 accreditation fee on builders who haven't made a single cedi yet. Not to hand one agency unlimited power to decide who is allowed to call themselves an ICT professional.

The bill is still under consultation. It hasn't passed. The backlash is loud and growing.

If you're a developer, a founder, a student teaching yourself to code, or anyone building something in Ghana's digital space — this affects you directly. Read the bill. Make noise. Respond to the consultations.

We built this ecosystem without permission. Let's defend it the same way.

— Jay