The achievement of G-Money platform in the last one year after its establishment and the reaction of the Ghana Football Association boss on the launch of the fund to assist the senior national team in the nation’s quest to end the 40-year wait for an AFCON title are some of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Wednesday.
The Times reports that G-Money has registered its one millionth customer on April 10, this year just over a year after its establishment.
The achievement of the milestone in just over a year shows strongly that G-Money is a force to reckon with in the mobile money services marketplace.
The trailblazing product was set up to offer an attractive alternative to Mobile Money services offered by Telcos on the Ghanaian market.
As a new entrant, this significant milestone will be marked with rewards to some customers, including the one-millionth patron.
Kofi Adomakoh, the MD of GCB Bank in a statement indicated, that “we are very pleased that our customers have recognised the value of the G-Money products and services.”
“The one millionth customer base within a little over a year, proves GCB’s commitment to offer the public not only bank-based financial services but also provide a more broad-based platform to serve other customers who may otherwise not have been able to transact through the banking system, ” he said.
He also emphasised GCB’s commitment to ensuring financial inclusion through technology and constant innovation.
G-Money was established as the mobile money arm of GCB and launched its service on January 30, 2020.
The newspaper says that the Ghana Football Association (GFA) boss Kurt Edwin Simeon-Okraku, has expressed profound gratitude to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for showing desire to raise funds for the senior national team in the nation’s quest to end the 40-year wait for an AFCON title.
President Simeon-Okraku made this assertion on Monday when President Akufo-Addo held a breakfast meeting with CEOs of some corporate entities at the Office of the President to solicit support for the Black Stars and the other national teams, namely, Black Queens (Senior Women’s national team), Black Meteors (Male U-23), Black Satellites (Male U-20), Black Stars B, Black Starlets (Male U-17), Black Maidens (Female U-17), and the Black Princesses (Female u-20).
The Black Stars have both the 2022 World Cup qualifiers and the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations ahead, while the other national teams also gear up for different assignments in 2021 and beyond.
“I am humbled to be called upon to say a few words, to say thank you for the show of love and for responding to the call of our President for this all important national assignment,” Simeon-Okraku said.
“My first thank you goes to our President, the number one supporter of football in this country.
“I am not surprised that again our President has shown the way. Again today, he has shown the love for our people,” he said.
The Graphic reports that the immediate past Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS), Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, has called on stakeholders in the country’s electoral process to find ways to end election violence and deaths.
He said incidents of violence recorded in the 2020 general election tainted the country’s bragging rights as the bastion of democracy on the continent.
Dr. Chambas, therefore, urged the Electoral Commission (EC), the security agencies, the government and other stakeholders to work towards averting such incidents in future polls.
The former Special Representative was speaking at the opening of a three-day post election stakeholders’ review workshop on the 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections in Ada in the Greater Accra Region yesterday.
It was organised by the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers (CODEO), with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
In attendance were representatives of political parties, the EC, the Ghana Bar Association (GBA), the media, the police, the European Union, among others.
The newspaper says that a Professor of Political Science at the University of Ghana, Legon, Professor Joseph Atsu Ayee, has called on Ghanaians to own the Ghana Beyond Aid programme.
He said three years after the programme was launched, Ghanaians had not owned the vision to enable them understand what Ghana Beyond Aid meant and their duties as citizens to trigger the needed attitude for the good of the nation.
Prof. Ayee, who shared his perspective on the Ghana Beyond Aid in an interview, said the vision was still work in progress because there had been little or no public education on the programme for the citizenry to understand and carry the vision wide.
He said the communication strategy of the document talked about an annual public forum to review and discuss the various aspects of the vision; ‘‘but I have not heard of such forum taken place.’’
‘‘Stakeholder engagement had not been effective because of the COVID-19. All attention was focused on the pandemic and even now, COVID-19 has engaged our attention.
‘‘I think the government should take up the challenge to carry the burden of COVID-19 and Ghana Beyond Aid so that both programmes will run simultaneously, else a vision which is a national agenda will become a government agenda and will soon be forgotten,’’ Prof. Ayee emphasised.
He said a collaboration between the Ghana Beyond Aid Secretariat and the Ministry of Information in terms of allocating resources to media houses to serialise the Ghana Beyond Aid Charter and Strategy in local languages would help Ghanaians to know what exactly the vision was about.
With such education, he said, the citizenry would be able to give feedback about the programme because it was a two-way communication strategy.
GIK/APA