At the maiden edition of Digital Foundation Africa’s Monthly dialogue, which was organized in collaboration with the SG Innov8 hub in Accra, innovators across various sections of the Ghanaian Digital Ecosystem called on the need to have a co-created national digital plan for the Ghanaian digital economy championed by the private sector.
Submission by Blaise Bayou, a Technology for Development Lead from the Tony Blair Institute of Social Change, indicated how various sectors of the Ghanaian digital economy is growing steadying with no clear direction to achieve success in the area of Fintech, Agriculture, Health, E-commerce among others.
The President of the Ghana Fintech & Payment Associations mentioned that COVID-19 being the major accelerator for adopting digital technologies in the country indicated how inclusive the systems and policies should be, especially to the uneducated. Mr. Martin K Awagah illustrated that Ghana has many success stories in the Africa Fintech Space, hence the need to promote such achievements while considering such in the consensus building of a collaborative national digital plan from all sectors.
During the dialogue, the education, health, and commerce sector was a major focus these experts identified as a major priority Ghana should concentrate on having a plan on.
However, Vicentia Asilev, an emerging technologies expert, also edged both the private and public sectors to do more research on Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and blockchain, among other technologies that will help ease the way of doing business in Ghana and beyond while putting privacy and security first.
She also called for the need to train more women in these emerging technologies fields with a roadmap in making these emerging technologies the underlining features when drafting and designing a digital plan for the country.
“We make payments and transact businesses online every day; government itself is now leading the agenda of digitalization starting with its agencies, and so having a digital policy for the country is a great step and will guide businesses, people, and governments in the digital transformation leading to impacting its citizens” – George Adjebeng illustrated on why we need a national digital plan.
Ghana has been one of the first countries in Africa to be good at championing digital initiatives; however, it has a lot of policies across major sectors but not an achievable and measured agenda within its digital ecosystem. Being one of the KINGS in the digital ecosystem, one would have thought she would be the first to have a digital plan, just like Kenya, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Tunisia, and the rest.
By; Excerpts from Digital Dialogue by Digital Foundation Africa.
source https://www.jbklutse.com/digital-innovators-call-for-a-national-digital-plan-for-ghana/
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