By Edward Dankwah
Accra, Feb. 03, GNA – Mr Michael Owusu, the Chief Operating Officer of KGL Group, has described Ghana as one of the biggest global flag holders of digitisation in the last few years.
He said this was due to the “heavy” initiatives’ that the Government had put in place to promote digitisation since 2018.
Mr Owusu described some of the initiatives as the electronic currency, payment gateways, digitised government records and many programmes which were specifically designed to ensure growth in the sector of Information Technology (IT).
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, he emphasised on the country’s growth which showed that digitisating various sectors had yielded the right results.
Mr Owusu said the announcement made by Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice President, at the Ghana International Trade and Finance conference on National Bank of Ghana’s partnership with the Giesecke+Devrient in August 2021, proposed the introduction of digital currencies, intended to be used as alternatives to physical cash.
“This step was taken to promote economic growth in the country and to reduce physical cash dependency. The launch of digital currency would reduce friction between businesses and would make transactions easier and faster. This would not only reduce the cost of business but would also reduce delays and variability,” he said.
Mr Owusu also indicated that many digital payment platforms had been launched to facilitate easy payments in public and private sectors since the announcement of digital currency.
He said, “the ghana.gov digital service platform today enables citizens of Ghana to make payments directly to the Ministries and Agencies. Payment of taxes and government utility bills are now made easy with digital payment gateways.”
Mr Owusu explained that Broadcast Monitoring Centre (BMC) was established to provide a way for continuous real-time monitoring of broadcast media outlets to see to it that they conformed to Ghana’s broadcasting technical standards.
He added that the automatic logging of deviations from authorised parties of the various transmission parameters provided evidenced-based enforcement and also gave trustworthy data.
“The BMC in Ghana makes sure that all audio and video broadcasts are according to the guidance of the Government,” he said.
Mr Owusu explained that the Government in 2021 integrated digitisation into saving and securing government records and created the National Identification Authority and the card scheme projects which hitherto were managed manually.
He said today, the country had digitised more than 80 per cent of official data, and it was expected that by the end of 2023, digital records would take over manual ones.
He added that this would improve data protection and management a thousand times as in the past.
GNA