Free Wi-Fi Scandal: Education Ministry’s negligence cost taxpayers GHC 430 million

The Auditor General has indicted the Ministry of Education (MoE) for implementing the Akufo-Addo government’s free wifi project for Senior High Schools (SHSs) without a clear implementation plan.

This, according to the Auditor General’s report for 2024, resulted in the payment of more than GHC430 million to the project contractor, even though no services were rendered for long periods.

The problems plaguing the free Wi-Fi project were first revealed by The Fourth Estate in 2024, with whistleblower evidence pointing to procurement breaches, poor service delivery, and what appeared to be an orchestrated scheme to defraud the state. That investigative report, based on one year of project records, indicated that GHC54 million had been paid to the contractor, BusyInternet, for little to no work.

But the latest report by the Auditor General reveals that, after four years, the free Wi-Fi project cost the Ghanaian taxpayer almost half a billion cedis, with little to show for that expenditure. The best the nation got out of the project can only be described as intermittent internet supply to a few schools, frustrating teachers, students, and school administrators.

In his latest report, the Auditor General expressed disappointment in the failure of the project to deliver what it had promised, even though a lot of money had been spent on it.

“Providing internet services to schools, colleges, and educational offices is a laudable initiative that involves high ICT investment costs,” the Auditor General says in his report. “Hence, the absence of a clear implementation plan or formal policy and procedure to optimize the delivery of the intended benefits undermines the value for money in the investment being made.”

The free Wi-Fi project was initially budgeted to cost GHC84.4 million. This amount was meant to be used to install modems in 717 Senior High Schools, 16 GES Regional offices, 260 GES District offices, and 46 colleges of Education, as well as the delivery of broadband services at a monthly cost of GHC6.37 million.

Even though the modems were largely installed, the broadband service delivery was patchy at best, with most schools reporting no internet connectivity. Yet, Busy Internet and its parent company, Lifted Logistics, kept invoicing the government, and the Education Ministry kept paying despite complaints from school heads and project coordinators.

“The Ministry of Education had made a total payment of GHC430,516,872.11 to Busy Internet Ghana Ltd and Lifted Logistics Ghana Ltd for the period between 3rd February 2020 and 24th October 2023,” the Auditor General’s report for 2024 says.

Below is the breakdown of monies paid by the Ministry of Education.

Perhaps what might outrage every Ghanaian taxpayer is how the Ministry of Education completely surrendered control of the whole free Wi-Fi project to the vendor.

The contract required a deployment of three major monitoring systems, namely a network monitoring system to track uptimes and outages, real-time data dashboards, and a professional ticketing and complaint handling platform

The contract also mandates that the vendor give the officials of the Education Ministry access to these systems. This access would allow the officials to see whether the Ministry was getting value for money. But somehow, this crucial requirement was simply ignored, and the Ministry appears never to have complained about it.

According to the Audit report, the MoE relied on the vendor’s own reports to approve payments. And when problems arose, which were constant, the officials of the Ministry of Education solely relied on the vendor, Busy Internet Ghana Ltd’s own technicians for updates.

As such, there was no independent oversight, no way to verify claims, and no mechanism to hold the vendor accountable for poor performance, the audit revealed.

Surprisingly, the Ministry’s ICT staff weren’t trained on how to use most of the monitoring systems they were paying for. They had access to just one dashboard while other critical monitoring tools remained inaccessible to the Ministry’s ICT staff.

Connected on paper, disconnected in reality

Three years into the contract, no user satisfaction survey had been conducted to determine whether beneficiary institutions were satisfied with the service. Yet, in 2023, the Ministry of Education increased monthly payments from GHC6.37 million to GHC11.55 million without any justification.

When the Auditor-General later sampled 224 of the 1,017 beneficiary institutions in a user satisfaction survey, the results revealed widespread dissatisfaction

The Auditor General’s results from the survey revealed that 97% of users reported poor internet speed and latency. All of the users sampled ( 100%) said the bandwidth was inadequate for their needs and had abandoned the service.
75% said technical problems remained unresolved for months, and none of those sampled (i.e. 0%) reported receiving regular maintenance

Busy Internet’s contract breaches

In the last five months of 2023, Busy Internet shortchanged Ghanaian taxpayers by billing schools like Achimota SHS, Aburi Girls, Daboase SHS, and Tarkwa SHS for 30 days of internet service the schools never received.

This represented a pattern of systematic overcharging that affected over four hundred schools across Ghana.

However, the contract between Busy Internet and the Ministry of Education was explicit – a detailed Service Level Agreement (SLA) spelled out expectations for service quality, communication, and billing. Yet, both sides failed to uphold them.

According to the contract, the vendor was to ensure 99% service availability to each school or education office. Any unplanned outages or service degradation were to be resolved within four hours of a reported fault. If service was disrupted for more than four hours in a day, the vendor would lose payment for that full day, and if service was unavailable for more than half the month, the vendor would receive no payment at all for that month.

These safeguards should have protected taxpayers from exactly what happened. Instead, Busy Internet billed and the Ministry paid as if services were running smoothly, even when most beneficiary institutions were offline.

The audit report further revealed that the committee responsible for validating vendor claims should have rejected at least GHC14.5 million in charges because Busy Internet billed for internet service at locations where there was no service.

Below is a summary of the invoices submitted by the vendor for August and September 2023, and the active days the audit team checked on the vendor’s monitoring systems.

Data Source: Auditor General’s Report