The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has fired a new warning shot.
This time, the enemy is not “apor” leaking on WhatsApp at 2am. It is not the invigilator looking away. It is Artificial Intelligence.
Lillian Frimpong, Head of the School Exams Administration Department at WAEC, said last week that the Council is worried about the growing use of AI by students to answer examination questions. She described it as “a serious concern that must be addressed to protect the integrity of examinations” and urged students to rely on their own knowledge.
On the surface, it sounds noble. Of course we must protect integrity. But in staff rooms, in universities, and in EdTech hubs from East Legon to Kumasi, one big question is being asked:
HOW DID WAEC KNOW IT WAS AI?
And that question is not disrespect. It is scientific.
Are You Marking Every Script With AI Detectors?
WASSCE School 2026 had 512,862 candidates. Each candidate wrote an average of 8 subjects. That is over 4 million scripts.
Did WAEC run 4 million scripts through an AI detector?
Which detector? Turnitin? ZeroGPT? OpenAI’s own classifier — which OpenAI itself shut down in 2023 because it was not accurate?
Global research shows all AI detectors have a false positive rate. A student who writes in a very clean, textbook, well-structured way — the kind of student Ghanaian grammar schools have trained for years — is often flagged as AI.
If a student in PRESEC writes: “Photosynthesis is the process by which green plants manufacture their own food using sunlight, carbon dioxide and water,” is that AI? Or is that exactly what the syllabus says?
If WAEC cancels a result because “similarity index shows AI-generated content,” where is the evidence? Was the student caught with a phone? Was there a confession? Or was it a software that said 78% probability?
WAEC owes us transparency.
We have seen this movie before. In 2024 and 2025, WAEC cancelled over 7,000 subject results for “collusion” because students had similar wrong answers. Now, if two students define “demand” correctly, will we call it AI collusion?
You cannot destroy a child’s future on the basis of a secret algorithm. If you say it is AI, show us the script. Show us the prompt. Show us the method. Let independent experts verify.
AI is Good. We Must Not Demonize It.
Here is the painful irony: The same WAEC that is warning against AI is marking scripts of students who have been learning with AI for two years.
Ask any serious WASSCE candidate today how they studied. They will mention, ChatGPT, YouTube AI tutors, Meta AI on WhatsApp. A student in Tamale who has never seen a Physics lab has watched AI animation explain projectile motion. A girl in Sefwi who failed English now uses AI to correct her essays before her teacher marks them.
That is not cheating. That is learning.
AI is not “apor.” AI is a teacher who never sleeps. It explains Twi proverbs, solves Core Maths past questions step-by-step, and translates Integrated Science into Hausa or Ewe.
The problem is not that students used AI to LEARN. The problem is if they smuggled it into the exam hall.
But we must be careful not to send a message that AI itself is evil. If we devilish AI today, we will produce graduates who are scared of the very tool the world is using to build the future.
What WAEC should be doing is:
1. Separate AI Learning from AI Cheating: Celebrate students who use AI as a study tool — platforms that use AI animation to make GES curriculum easier — and punish only those caught with devices in the hall.
2. Publish Your Detection Framework: Which tool? What threshold? What human verification? What appeal process?
3. Train Invigilators, Don’t Just Blame Children: How does AI enter a heavily invigilated hall? If AI answers are appearing, it means phones are entering. Fix supervision.
4. Teach AI Literacy, Don’t Ban It: Cambridge and IB have already introduced AI-use policies. Students declare if they used AI for research. Ghana cannot pretend we are still in 1990.
Mrs. Frimpong is right — integrity matters. But integrity also means fairness. A student who genuinely studied hard should not have his English paper cancelled because his essay was “too perfect.”
The future of Ghanaian education is not *WAEC vs AI.
It is WAEC + AI — using AI to set better questions, to mark faster, to detect real leakages, and to help the boy in Bawku who has no teacher.
AI is good. The student who uses it to understand is smart. The system that uses it to catch cheats must also be smart enough to prove it.
Until WAEC can answer HOW they know it was AI, with evidence beyond a software percentage, the accusation will sound like the old story: We couldn’t catch them, so we called it malpractice.
And our children deserve better than that.
Learn AI now, or be deleted later. Visit Animationworld.org, Animationworld.us, Ckc.institute, Udeme.us, readonline.us and learn AI
Alexander Afriyie, supervising editor, ghanacrimereport.com and ghanatalk.com
