Ghana Government Email Crisis Exposes Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities

ACCRA, GHANA – Ghana’s National Information Technology Agency (NITA) confirmed that government communication systems suffered a significant disruption starting Monday, August 25, 2025, leaving ministries, departments, and agencies without access to official .gov.gh email services for nearly three days and raising serious questions about the country’s digital infrastructure security.

The email outage began at approximately 5:00 AM on August 25, 2025, affecting all government entities that rely on the official .gov.gh domain for official correspondence. NITA Chief Executive Officer Dr. Mark Oliver Kevor confirmed the disruption was caused by “technical challenges” and that the agency was working with its technical partner, eSolutions, to restore services.

The prolonged downtime has forced government workers to resort to personal email platforms and alternative communication methods, creating potential data privacy risks and operational inefficiencies. Security analysts and cybersecurity experts have expressed concerns about whether the system may have been compromised, given the sensitive nature of government communications and the timing amid rising cyber threats across West Africa.

Ghana has emerged as the most targeted country in West Africa for cyber attacks, experiencing 4,753 distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in the first half of 2024 alone, with the largest attack measuring 314.25 Mbps. The country’s computer-related services sector bore the brunt of these attacks, enduring 2,759 incidents during this period.

Technical Partnership Under Scrutiny

The disruption has highlighted Ghana’s dependency on external technical partnerships for critical government infrastructure. eSolutions, the Microsoft partner responsible for maintaining the government email platform, has been working around the clock to restore services. The company, which won Microsoft Partner of the Year awards for Ghana in 2021, provides the Smart Workplace platform used across over 400 ministries, departments, agencies, and metropolitan assemblies.

NITA issued its first official statement on Wednesday, August 27, acknowledging the outage and apologizing for the inconvenience. However, the agency provided no specific timeline for restoration or details about the root cause of the technical failure, leaving users and stakeholders in uncertainty.

The incident has exposed vulnerabilities in Ghana’s digital transformation efforts, particularly as the country positions itself as a technology hub in West Africa. With cybersecurity threats increasing across the region – where cybercrime accounts for more than 30% of all reported crime in Western Africa – the email outage has intensified calls for stronger investments in cybersecurity infrastructure and more resilient government IT systems.