The 2021 edition of the African Cashless Payment Systems (ACPS) Conference is set to be held in Accra and the occasion will also be used to honor Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and other captain of the cashless and tech industry for their contribution to Ghana’s digital transformation.
The theme for this year’s African Cashless Payment Systems Conference will be centered on ”Building a Cashless Africa.”
Ghana has been on a digital transformation journey dubbed The Digital Ghana Agenda since 2017 and the Vice President has firmly been in the driving seat of that journey. The award will therefore be in recognition of that.
The most recent edition of the Bawumia Speaks Lecture Series, was focused on digital economy, and he laid out a myriad of initiatives, systems and infrastructure put in place since 2017 to put Ghana well on the path to become a digital and cashless economy.
Chief among the digital infrastructure put in place by the government under the watch of the Vice President are the national ID system, mobile money interoperability, paperless port, Ghana.gov, GHQR, Digital Address System, National Common Platform for Property Management, Common Platform for fraud management and telecom revenue monitoring, Tax ID number system, e-Pharmacy platform and many others.
All that has enabled the digitization of births and deaths registry, driver and vehicle licensing, national health insurance registration and renewal, motor insurance system, health records system, medical supplies delivery service, tax collection and revenue mobilization, property addresses system, company registration system, passport generation, and many more.
The digitalization of the various systems has helped to promote transparency and accountability, provide efficient public services, tackle corruption, improve efficiency in the health and education sectors, enhance domestic revenue mobilization/tax collection and provide financial inclusion and a cash-lite economy.
Read also: Ghana.Gov platform to help increase revenue by GHS3 billion – Bawumia
Particularly, on financial inclusion and cash-lite society, the mobile money interoperability platform, the first of its kind in Africa, established under the watch of the Vice President has put bank accounts in the pockets of over 15 million Ghanaians who did not have access to financial services hitherto.
But all this was possible because the private sector players in the digital, tech and cashless space invested into the kinds of technology that gave the government confidence to begin the digital Ghana agenda. The telcos, FinTechs and IT industry players have made immense contribution and they continue to partner government in realizing the deliverables of the Digital Ghana Agenda.
Organizers of the ACPS conference have therefore earmarked the Vice President and several industry players for the maiden edition of FIN Awards in Ghana as part of the conference slated for later this month.
The Conference
The ACPS Conference will be the largest FinTech gathering because there is considerable global attention on Africa due to the ongoing economic transformation backed by digitization within the context of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) initiative.
It will be an agenda-setting arena on the future of Africa in the face of modern cashless payment systems such as debit cards, credit cards, electronic funds transfers, e-wallets, mobile money, automated teller machines (ATM) and e-commerce payment systems.
Participants from Africa and the Diaspora countries will be attending the conference.
There will be forty (40) presentations from twenty expert speakers, six group projects, and six panel discussions will be made as well as sixty exhibition booths from leading banking solutions service providers in the world.
The Guest of Honor for the conference will be the Vice-President of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
Ahead of the conference, the country reps for ACPS held a press conference to educate the public on how to curtail cybercrime and cyber fraud, and how the government of Ghana is cooperating with financial institutions to build a cashless system.
Ghana FIN Coordinator, Nii Amarh Amarteifio told journalists that the conference will also facilitate the latest technology demonstrations, knowledge sharing, high-level networking, and most importantly, one-on-one business meetings between decision-makers and top-tier solution providers transforming the digital future of the financial firmament of the region.
Technology and financial industry personalities expected at the conference include Thomas Kwesi Quartey, Deputy Chair, African Union; Ken Ofori Atta, Ghana’s finance minister; Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Ghana’s communications and digitalization minister; Dr. Ernest Addison, Governor, Bank of Ghana; Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, budget, and national planning, Nigeria; Isa Pantami, minister of communications and digital economy, Nigeria; and David Solomon, executive director, Goldman Sachs among others.
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful and Archie Hesse, CEO of Ghana Interbank Payments and Settlements Systems (GhIPSS), will speak on topical issues affecting cashless transactions in Africa.