Global
In Ghana, Internet Savvy Intensifies Scams
Analysts shake their heads, but hope more education will prod young people to put tech skills to better use
livewire@journalism.nyu.edu
ACCRA, Ghana – An online scam perpetrated by a group of fraudsters known as the “Sakawa boys” was recently exposed here. These men, posing online as women and gay men, entice foreigners into sending them large sums of money.
The scammers post nude pictures to convince their targets to wire money through transfer outlets like Western Union. By bribing the attendants at the transfer outlets, the boys are then able to pick up the money transfers in the names of their made-up identities.
The cyber scam is the Sakawa boys’ newest innovation.
Their past schemes used the Ghana Post Company to similar effect. But the GPC, collaborating with local police, began intercepting the fraudulent mail, and with the rise of public access to Internet in Ghana, the Sakawa boys moved online.
The Minister of Communication, Haruna Iddrissu, has said that the government is working to combat online fraud; a Cyber Security Law has been enacted, which includes a provision for a Cyber Emergency Response Team.
Yet the Sakawa cyber scam perfectly demonstrates the problems of development and modernization in Ghana: new technology is flooding in, but the government and the private sector lack the infrastructure to support it.
The scam was discussed at the summer 2009 conference TEDx, an independent offshoot of the world-renowned TED, and the first meeting of its kind in West Africa. [TEDx in fact stands for Trials, Tribulations and Triumph, and TED for Technology, Entertainment, Design.]
Though their activities are illegal, the Sakawa boys were cited as examples of young Ghanaians tapping into the global networking potential of Ghana’s developing information communication technology sector.
Dr. Amos Anyimadu, a leading political scientist here, said there are two digital demographics in Ghana, split between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants.”
“Digital natives,” he said, like the Sakawa boys, are the new, typically younger generation of people who have grown up using technology and to whom the digital media comes to naturally.
But “digital immigrants” must learn technological skills to be brought into the digital age.
This split in digital demographics also represents a physical split between urban and rural Ghana. New technology is concentrated mostly in urban centers like Accra, while some rural areas in Ghana still lack electricity.
The Sakawa boys “are a reflection of how young people, when they get a hold of technology, can show their entrepreneurial spirit. They also present a headache for the government, of forcing in new technology,” said local Google Ghana administrator Estelle Akofio-Sowah.
“These young people know what other young people around the world have, and they want it too. So they hustle.”
Sheila Bartels-Sam, a Ghanaian technology entrepreneur and CEO of Platinum Technologies Ltd., agreed that the scammers “are quite smart.” “But they have no hope, no food, no money, they don’t know what to do next. It’s not a way to just get rich quick, but the only way they know how to move up.”
The missing infrastructure, the entrepreneurs agreed, was not so much lack of technology, but of education. Internet technology and the knowledge to use it are both present in Ghana, but without education, and the ethos of integrity many hope it will instill, tech knowledge only creates new opportunities for envy and hustling.
The Ghana Ministry of Information’s role is to educate people about government policies and infrastructural development.
Minister of Information Zita Okaikoi said that the national media in Ghana is sharply divided between government and opposition. And since President John Atta Mills and his National Democratic Congress party stepped into power in January 2009, after eight years in the opposition, “most of the media belongs to them,” she said, referring to formerly ruling New Patriotic Party.
The conference theme, “Africa in an Age of Uncertainty,” addressed Ghana’s role as a leader in ushering West Africa into the digital age, and the problems hindering that progress.
One problem is that Ghana has yet to marry its two major sectors: the real or traditional economy of agriculture and fabrics, and the cyber economy.
“We have the opportunity to promote a fertile exchange between the real economy and creative economy in a way that could have a revolutionary impact on development in this part of the world, if we can figure out how to transfer the lessons,” said Bright Simons, an IMANI director.
He explained that there is a disconnect between the traditional community and the new technology-driven culture in Ghana, and policymakers “don’t get it, or care about it.”
“There are two sets of visionaries, and they don’t talk to each other,” he said. “The question is: through bringing these worlds together and communicating, can we create something enduring and sustainable?”
Patrick Awuah, the president and founder of Ashesi University, a private liberal arts college that opened in Accra in 2002, with a mission to educate leaders and captains of industry and government, said one strategy he is using is to stop proctoring exams.
Instead, students are put on an honor system, and expected to do the right thing.
“Education is a means to improve the well-being of a society,” Awuah said. “The honor system promotes an ethos that results in leaders who can be trusted to run a nation.”
Technology leaders in Ghana met to discuss the state of the industry at TEDx, the first conference of its kind in West Africa.
Photo by Carlos Cagin