Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has been commended for spearheading a transformational digital reforms in Ghana, which is leading the way on the African continent.
For leading Ghana’s acclaimed digital reforms, respected Pan African publication, New African Magazine, has named Dr. Bawumia, alongside Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Macky Sall of Senegal and William Ruto of Kenya in an exclusive list of 100 most influential Africans.
The respected magazine listed the African leaders, and others, whose works, they said, are transforming lives and making significant impacts in their countries.
Commending Dr. Bawumia as one of Africa’s most influential leader in December 2022 edition, the magazine wrote that Dr. Bawumia’s successful digitisation initiative in Ghana is leading the way in Africa.
“Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is spearheading Ghana’s digitisation as a core economic strategy to solve socio-economic problems, formalise and build a more inclusive economy, deal with corruption and to provide social services more effectively,” wrote the magazine.
“His reforms are setting a unique precedent on the continent. His digitisation agenda has resulted in the implementation and adoption of a National Identification System, a Digital Property Addressing System and a Mobile Money Interoperability System. This is enabling a new set of opportunities for the consumer including mobile wallets and greater financial inclusion.”
Indeed, a number of digitisation initiatives Dr. Bawumia has successfully spearheaded in Ghana, are first in Africa, as no other country has achieved that.
For example, Ghana became the first African country to successfully issue a digital national identity cards to Ghanaian nationals and residents, the first African country to adopt a national digital property address system, the first African country to implement mobile money interoperability between mobile money accounts and bank accounts, the first country in Africa to implement a universal QR Code payment system, as well as the first country in the world where banks have issued their own mobile money wallets, known as GhanaPay, thereby, getting Ghana to be ranked number one in terms of access to financial inclusion in Africa.
Through Dr. Bawumia’s digitisation initiatives, Ghana has also become the world’s largest provider of medical delivery services using Zipline drones to deliver medical supplies to remote parts of the country in real time.
Other digital innovation Ghana has successfully implemented are a national scale E-Pharmacy digital platform, a common digital portal (Ghana.gov) to access various government services with ease, which also help to improve government’s revenue generation, as well as support the fight against corruption.