Ghanaian software engineer and solutions architect, Solomon Appier-Sign, has underscored the reason establishing a local digital platform for creatives will be difficult.

Responding the New Patriotic Party’s promise of providing an online streaming platform for musicians and other creatives to market their products, Appier-Sign told Kwame Dadzie on Joy FM’s Showbiz A-Z that the decision will come with challenges. 

“It’s a good thing. If it is going to be local, that is job creation. And my experience in this space over the years has shown me that there are a lot of talented hands here in Ghana and even there are companies outside that are coming in to get them. So it will help when it comes to job creation. But competition will not help make these platforms survive,” he noted.

He therefore suggested that if any government is bent on making this policy idea work, there should be a way of reducing the penetration of foreign digital platforms in Ghana.

“If we really want to have our version of these platforms here and make them survive, unfortunately what we have to do, is to some extent, reduce or block the foreign competitors. I have been in certain countries where I have not been able to stream Ghanaian songs. I tried shooting certain small videos on some platforms and I wanted to post with Sarkodie and Shatta Wale’s songs behind and I couldn’t find them. They wouldn’t even show. So blocking these services won’t be the first time of it happening. They are doing it and it is working. So it’s like protecting your turf,” he told Kwame Dadzie.

According to Appier-Sign, it will be difficult for Ghanaian users of foreign digital platforms to ditch the quality service they have with them, to a new one that is locally established. 

“If I have been on a big platform for a long time and you bring a new one and I still have access to the old one where I have data stored over the years, why should I stop and come and pay for another service and use it. Even if it’s free. Sometimes looking at the date that I have on the old one, I wouldn’t want to leave. So if we really want this to work, we have to go very hard to protect the space and either go into partnership or block some of these applications so they don’t bring the heavy competition that they have,” he said.

In the 2020 manifesto of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), they promised to “build a digital platform for artistes to make their products available to the global market.” This promise has been repeated in the party’s 2024 manifesto, promising to “establish, in partnership with the private sector, a streaming and digital management platform for Ghanaian content developers in the creative arts.”

Asked why the promise was not fulfilled after NPP won the 2020 election, the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mark Okraku-Mantey, said Joy FM’s Manifesto Debate on Creative Economy that their research later proved that there was not a viable market for it at the time. 

“… and so we think of audio, we think of pictures or video, we think of products like fashion, the ecosystem of the arts, anything that is sellable, a platform that could enable someone to sit here and sell to the world. That is the kind of platform we are looking at. We’ve gotten people, and when we say we are going to build it is not 100% public service job. We will partner the public sector to get this done. 

We’ve already gotten offers and we are still scanning, we are still monitoring. 

Because I have said this over and over that the top companies in communication like MTN, airtel and the rest have tried: MTN Play, we’ve had deezer, they have had their own challenges so we still need to monitor the market a bit further to see if it is still viable and the moment we get the green light, we will provide that with the private sector, he said. 

Asked why the party considered to include this in the manifesto in spite of the challenges, he said “manifestoes are not cast in stone.”