Education-centered critical policy analysis of AI: Ghana's AI strategy as a case

Abstract

National AI strategies increasingly guide governance, workforce development, innovation, and competitiveness, but less is known about how they frame education as a sector with pedagogical, cultural, ethical, and implementation demands. This study develops and applies an Education-Centered AI Policy Framework to analyze Ghana's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, 2025-2035. Using critical qualitative policy document analysis, we examined the strategy through six components: policy purpose, teacher agency and professional learning, curriculum and assessment, language and culture, responsible AI and learner protection, and participation and implementation governance. Findings show that Ghana's strategy is ambitious and timely, especially in its emphasis on AI literacy, youth skills, TVET, workforce readiness, rural outreach, local language data, inclusion, and responsible AI governance. However, the education agenda is stronger on national AI readiness than on school-level implementation. Teacher agency, pre-service teacher education, curriculum progression, assessment guidance, AI disclosure, multilingual pedagogy, culturally responsive AI use, child-centered safeguards, and participatory governance remain underdeveloped. We also identify document-level concerns about transparency and coherence, including apparent AI-styled visual content without visible disclosure and a mismatch between a vision and mission figure and its textual explanation. We argue that Ghana needs a sector-specific, education-centered AI policy and implementation pathway that connects workforce readiness with teacher preparation, curriculum reform, assessment redesign, learner protection, infrastructure, local language instruction, culturally responsive pedagogy, locally responsive AI tools, and participatory governance.