Ghana has made significant progress in expanding digital connectivity. Mobile networks cover much of the country, fibre infrastructure continues to expand, and Internet access has become central to education, healthcare, commerce, agriculture and public services.

Yet connectivity is not the same as meaningful connectivity.

Across rural and underserved communities, the barriers are often more complicated than simply building another telecommunications tower. Low population density, difficult terrain, unreliable electricity, limited purchasing power and the cost of backhaul can make commercially driven deployment difficult to justify.

This raises an important policy question: What happens when the market cannot, by itself, connect everyone?

One answer is increasingly visible across Africa and elsewhere: community networks.

Beyond the traditional connectivity model

A community network is fundamentally different from a conventional commercial network. Instead of infrastructure being designed, owned, and managed exclusively by an external telecommunications provider, communities can participate in determining what connectivity they need, how infrastructure is deployed and, in appropriate models, how the network is governed and sustained.

This does not mean replacing Ghana’s telecommunications operators.
It means creating another layer of the connectivity ecosystem.
That distinction matters.

At Ghana’s recent Community Networks Policy Dialogue and Workshop, stakeholders from government, regulation, industry, civil society, academia, and the technical community examined how community networks could complement existing connectivity models and reach communities that remain underserved. Discussions focused on regulation, infrastructure sharing, spectrum, financing, sustainability, and community ownership.

The central lesson was clear: Ghana needs to move from discussing community networks as isolated projects to considering them as part of national connectivity policy.

The policy gap

Ghana already has institutions and mechanisms concerned with expanding connectivity. The National Communications Authority regulates electronic communications, while GIFEC has a mandate related to universal access and service.

The challenge is not necessarily the absence of institutions.

It is the absence of a sufficiently clear framework through which community-led connectivity initiatives can operate, grow, and interact with existing institutions and market players.

Without policy clarity, a community organisation interested in building a network can face fundamental questions:

• Who can operate it?
• What authorisation is required?
• What spectrum can it use?
• Can it access existing infrastructure?
• Can it obtain affordable backhaul?
• Can it benefit from universal-service funding?
• What technical and cybersecurity obligations apply?

And perhaps most importantly: What happens after the initial grant runs out?

These are policy questions, not simply technical questions.
Regulation should enable, not unintentionally exclude.

One of the strongest themes emerging from Ghana’s dialogue was the need for proportionate regulation.

A community network serving a small, underserved community should not necessarily face the same regulatory burden as a nationwide commercial telecommunications operator.

At the same time, community networks cannot operate in a regulatory vacuum.
Consumers still need protection. Networks must respect spectrum rules. Cybersecurity and privacy remain important. Interconnection and interference issues cannot simply be ignored.

The answer is therefore not deregulation.

It is appropriate regulation.

Ghana could consider a dedicated Community Network Authorisation or another proportionate regulatory mechanism that clearly defines eligibility, geographic scope, technical obligations, and accountability.
Such a framework could prioritise genuinely underserved and unserved communities while preventing community network mechanisms from becoming a route for regulatory arbitrage.

The dialogue between the National Communications Authority, industry representatives, and community-network advocates is therefore particularly important. The NCA indicated openness to considering an appropriate framework where there is genuine interest and a sufficiently developed proposal.

That creates an opportunity.

Infrastructure is often more important than the licence

A policy framework will not succeed if it focuses only on licensing. A community may obtain permission to operate a network and still be unable to connect because the nearest fibre point is too far away, electricity is unreliable or backhaul is prohibitively expensive.

Infrastructure sharing therefore needs to be central to the discussion.
Existing towers, fibre routes, power infrastructure, and backhaul capacity could potentially be shared under appropriate commercial and regulatory arrangements.

This is where collaboration with existing Internet service providers and network operators becomes critical. Community networks should not be designed as enemies of commercial operators. They can instead become last-mile partners.

An operator may have national infrastructure but no economic incentive to build the final connection to a small community. A community organisation may have the local knowledge, willingness, and social capital to manage that last mile.

Policy can bring the two together.

The real test is sustainability.

There is another uncomfortable question that every community network project must answer: Who pays for the network when the donor leaves?

A network can be successfully deployed and still fail if there is no sustainable model for electricity, maintenance, equipment replacement, technical support and backhaul.

The Ghana workshop therefore moved beyond the traditional assumption that connectivity projects should be grant-funded indefinitely.

Participants explored models including cooperatives, social enterprises, anchor institutions, infrastructure sharing, community contributions, and partnerships.

Schools and health facilities could, for example, become anchor institutions that provide predictable demand for connectivity. Local businesses could become customers. Communities could contribute to maintenance. Infrastructure could potentially generate additional revenue through sharing arrangements.

The principle should be simple:

External funding should help communities establish sustainable connectivity—not create permanent dependency.
Community ownership changes the equation.

The strongest argument for community networks may ultimately be social rather than technical. When communities participate in deciding what infrastructure they need, where it should be located, and how it should be maintained, connectivity becomes connected to local priorities.

A community may prioritise a school before a commercial customer.
A health facility may need reliable connectivity for telemedicine or digital health systems.
Farmers may need access to market information and digital agricultural services.
Young people may need connectivity for education, employment, and entrepreneurship.
This is why community needs assessments should precede network design.
Connectivity should serve development priorities not become an end.

A lesson from Afram Plains

A case presented during the workshop by Step Network illustrates how perceptions can change once communities experience meaningful connectivity.

When the project initially engaged the Afram Plains community, residents reportedly indicated that they wanted voice communication rather than Internet access. After experiencing Internet connectivity, however, their expectations changed significantly.

As Step Network described it, residents eventually became concerned when the network went offline because they had become accustomed to the services and opportunities connectivity enabled.

That experience illustrates an important point.

Demand for connectivity is sometimes created by demonstrating its value.
People cannot always articulate the benefits of a technology they have never experienced.
This is precisely why pilot community networks matter.
Ghana needs a national framework, not an isolated project.

Individual community network projects can demonstrate what is possible.
But isolated projects cannot, on their own, transform the national connectivity landscape.
Ghana needs a framework that connects the dots between:

policy + regulation + spectrum + infrastructure + financing + community ownership + technical capacity + cybersecurity.
A national Community Network Policy Framework could provide that structure.

Such a framework should consider at least seven areas:

1. Legal recognition of community networks.
2. Proportionate authorisation appropriate to their scale and purpose.
3. Affordable and appropriate spectrum access.
4. Infrastructure and backhaul sharing.
5. Access to relevant universal-service and development financing.
6. Community governance and ownership models.
7. Technical, cybersecurity and operational capacity building.

The framework should also establish clear eligibility criteria and safeguards to ensure that community networks complement rather than undermine legitimate commercial investment.

The next step: from dialogue to pilots

The most important outcome of the Ghana dialogue should not be another report sitting on a shelf. It should be implemented.

The proposed next steps include continued stakeholder engagement, development of a national policy framework, establishment of a multi-stakeholder community networks platform, identification of pilot communities and engagement with regulators and government.

The pilots should be deliberately diverse.
One could focus on education.
Another could integrate connectivity with healthcare.
Another could support agricultural communities.
The objective should be to generate evidence about what works and what does not.

That evidence can then inform national policy.

This is bigger than Internet access

Ghana’s community network conversation is ultimately about more than connecting people to the Internet.
It is about who gets to participate in Ghana’s digital future.
If digital transformation is concentrated in Accra and other economically attractive areas, Ghana risks creating a new form of inequality: communities that are technically connected to the digital economy and communities that remain largely outside it.

Community networks cannot solve that problem alone.
But they can become an important part of the solution.
The opportunity now is for Ghana to build a policy environment in which communities, regulators, industry, civil society, and development partners can work together.

The country does not need to choose between commercial networks and community networks.
It needs an ecosystem in which both can contribute.

The next phase of Ghana’s digital transformation should therefore not ask only how many people are covered. It should ask whether the people who remain underserved have the policy space, infrastructure, resources, and local capacity to connect themselves.

That is why Ghana needs a Community Network Policy Framework.