Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has emphasized the need for central banks in Africa to put in more efforts in making mobile money interoperability a reality on the continent.
Vice-President Bawumia said this could replace the idea of a single currency which has been on the drawing board for decades due to the inability of various countries to meet the convergence criteria.
Bawumia was speaking at the official opening of the maiden symposium on advancing interoperability in Africa in Accra on Friday (5 July).
“The idea of a common currency which came in 1963 has really been overtaken by the digital payment age that today you can think about mobile money as a common currency. If we make it interoperable, we don’t need to have the common currency before we get the benefits.”
“Making mobile money interoperable allows our citizens across the continent to trade seamlessly and so this is where I believe as African countries we need to focus on. One of the common problems of achieving a common currency was the difficulty of our respective countries in achieving the macro-economic convergence,” he added.
“I believe that If we are serious about it, we can work towards mobile money Interoperability at the continental stage and, therefore, we should move away in this regard from the macro-economic convergence criteria to digital payment convergence criteria,” Bawumia said.
Major telecommunication firms across the continent including GSM, Smart Africa, MTN, Telecel, Safaricom and Orange Morocco Telecom are attending Friday’s summit.
The forum is being organised by the Africa Prosperity Network (APN), organisers of Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD), in collaboration with the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
It is under the theme: “Scaling Up Interoperability: Using Mobile Money to Buy & Sell Across Africa. “The interoperability challenge.”
Line up of speakers
Speakers at the forum include the governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Dr Ernest Addision, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communication and Digitalisation, Dr Joe Anokye, director general of the National Communication Authority (NCA), Dr Ebiekure Jaspa Eradiri, president of All Africa SME’S Association, Kwame Oppong, head of fintech and innovation at Bank of Ghana.
Others are Dr Maxwell Opoku-Afari, first deputy governor of the Bank of Ghana, Foster Awintiti Akugri, transition manager, The Innovation Village, Uganda and Dome Scaffidi, president of SAPA Global Payment and Schemes.
