Ghana: Press spotlights President’s push for Africa-wide mobile interoperability, others

APA – Accra (Ghana)
President Akufo-Addo’s push for Africa-wide mobile interoperability at the African Union Summit is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo used his last African Union (AU) Summit to launch a passionate appeal to his colleague heads of state to support the implementation of an Africawide mobile telephony interoperability system.
Addressing the 37th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State of the African Union (AU) yesterday, President Akufo-Addo called for the adoption of the 2024 Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD 2024) Compact Document and, specifically, the adoption of a continental interoperability network across all member states.
This, he stressed, would give a major boost to Africa’s efforts toward building the world’s largest single market through the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) by allowing millions of Africans to buy and sell goods and services across borders in their local currencies.
In his address to his fellow leaders at the Nelson Mandela Plenary Hall at the AU head office in Addis Ababa, President Akufo-Addo said Africa’s ambition to establish the world’s largest single market under AfCFTA would be enhanced mightily by the continent’s leaders adopting a “collective, aggressive embrace of the digital economy and its available tools.”
He said, “At the end of last month’s three-day Africa Prosperity Dialogues (APD) 2024, which I was happy to host at the Peduase Presidential Lodge in Aburi, Ghana, the participants signed up to the Peduase Compact, a document I am informed has been widely distributed here at this Summit.
“Allow me to focus on one very transformative and, at the same time, very doable item in the Compact, which, if implemented, can truly and meaningfully fast-track the inclusive realisation of the AfCFTA.
“The participants in this year’s Africa Prosperity Dialogues were unanimous in agreeing that enabling interoperability to have a single pan-African payment system is the easiest, quickest and most effective way to accelerate and deepen the single market project in Africa.
It is a low-hanging fruit way of making AfCFTA immediately meaningful to tens of millions of people across Africa,” President Akufo-Addo further stated.
The newspaper says that the Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has said that Ghana will soon establish bilateral ECOWAS roaming service with Togo, Benin, and the Gambia.
This follows Ghana’s successful implementation of a similar pact with Côte d’Ivoire in 2023.
Speaking at a press conference in Accra on Sunday, February 18, 2024, the Minister, who is also the Member of Parliament for Ablekuma West, said Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire in June 2023 became the first ECOWAS countries to implement the ECOWAS Free Roaming initiative.
The free roaming service simply means that Ghanaians subscribers visiting Côte d’Ivoire will receive calls without paying roaming fees and will be charged Côte d’Ivoire’s local rates when making calls to Ghana while in Côte d’Ivoire, and vice versa. Also, subscribers travelling between both countries will be exempted from international roaming charges.
The Ghanaian Times reports that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has introduced additional monetary policy measures to mop up excess capital from the market to control inflation.
Inflation continue to decline and currently at 35.2 per cent after peaking at 54.2 per cent in last year December.
The new measures which are to take effect on November, 30, 2023 are the unification of the currency holding for the Cash Reserve Ratio requirement on foreign currency denominated deposits and domestic currency deposits for banks and the new unified Cash Reserve Ratio for total deposits (cedi and foreign currency) – are to be held in Cedis.
“This measure is to reinforce the Bank’s liquidity management operations to address excess structural liquidity conditions in the market and provide additional impetus to the disinflation process,” Dr Addison, the Governor of the BoG disclosed this during a news conference at the 115th regular meeting of the MPC in Accra on Monday.
He explained that the Cash Reserve Ratio requirement on foreign currency denominated deposits and domestic currency deposits of banks were being reset to 15 per cent.
Dr Addison said the Committee would continue to monitor developments in the banking sector and deploy other policy tools, as and when required, to support stability.
The Governor explained that the new directive would further help to bring inflation down and withdraw excess liquidity from the market.
Dr Addison disclosed that all the 23 universal banks had submitted re-capitalisation plans to the BoG, saying the Banking Supervision Department and the MPC had reviewed the plans and were credible.
“We are quite hopeful that within the next two years most of the banks would have capitalized and be able to meet the capital adequacy threshold without reliefs,” adding that “Right now they are meeting those capital threshold with regulatory reliefs.”
Dr Addison said the banking sector remained stable, sound, liquid and profitable, in spite of the impact of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP).
The Governor said profitability continued to improve as banks continued to invest in high yielding short-dated BOG and Government of Ghana (GOG) instruments.
The banking sector showed some resilience as the various stress tests on banks’ capital, following adverse macroeconomic shocks, pointed to stability,” Dr Addison stated.
The newspaper says that a total of GH¢210,307,873,817.32 has been received through the Ghana.gov platform as government revenue since it was introduced in 2020, the Minister of Communication and Digitalisation, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has disclosed.
She said the substantial amount collected through the platform, underscored the plat¬form’s pivotal role in streamlining financial transactions, enhancing transparency, and bolstering the nation’s fiscal integrity.
“Significance of Revenue Collection One of the most compelling indicators of the platform’s success lies in its remarkable reve¬nue collection figures. Currently, Ghana.gov has facilitated the collection of an impressive sum of GH¢210 billion,” she emphasised.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful disclosed this when she took her turn at the Sunday edition of the bi-weekly minister’s briefing organised by the Ministry of Information in Accra.
She explained that the success of the platform also underscored the growing trust and confidence of citizens and businesses in digital government platforms, adding that “It reflects a paradigm shift towards digitalfirst governance, where convenience, accessibility, and accountability are prioritised in service delivery.”
The minister noted that as a result of the user-friendly interface and comprehensive array of online functionalities provided by the platform, it had become the cornerstone of the country’s digital transformation journey with 1507 institutions currently on-boarded onto it.
She said the number of institution that had on-boarded onto the platform within this short period of three years compared to the 13 that on-boarded onto the e-Ser¬vices platform within the same amount of time clearly demonstrated how valuable the platform had become.
“This milestone symbolises the tangible impact of digital innovation on public ser¬vices delivery, economic efficiency, and citi¬zen empowerment. By harnessing the power of technology to centralise and optimise revenue collection processes, Ghana.gov has not only expedited financial transactions but also minimised bureaucratic red tape and mitigated the risk of revenue leakages, effec¬tively addressing the issue of public sector corruption,” she added.
GIK.APA