governor of Ghna’s central bank, Ernest AddisonG urged African countries to take bold steps to implement a system of seamless mobile money transactions across the continent to boost intra-Africa trade and enhance financial inclusion Thursday.
Addison made this call while delivering a paper during the ongoing Africa Prosperity Dialogue at Peduase in Ghana’s Eastern Region.
Speaking on the topic, “Scaling up mobile interoperability to deepen financial inclusion and intra-Africa Trade,” he said the advent of mobile money and mobile money interoperability has significantly transformed access to financial services in Africa, with a huge leap in the continent’s financial inclusion index.
With technology, he said Africa has the opportunity to transform its payment landscape in a way that would remove barriers for cheaper and more convenient cross-border transfers while reducing settlement times.
Sadly, however, he said the continent has not yet realized the full potential of this development because mobile money operations have not been deployed to operate across borders seamlessly in Africa.
The governor noted that attempts to do this in the past were curtailed by a lack of collaboration and differences in the developmental levels of national payment systems, among other factors, leading to untimely failures.
The governor said weak and informal cross-border payments are a formidable barrier to boosting intra-African trade.
Overcoming these roadblocks requires concerted efforts from all stakeholders to create an ecosystem conducive to interoperability to address the specific challenges in the region, added the governor.
“It is about time Africa considers promoting mobile money interoperability to realize its full benefits of deepening financial inclusion and intra-Africa trade, which is critical for the success of the Africa Free Continental Trade Area (AfCTA),” Addison urged.
He added that the Pan-African Payments and Settlement System is one good step towards achieving this objective but needs more consensus building to find suitable ways of supporting such initiatives to enhance financial inclusion and the implementation of AfCFTA.
“The way forward is for African countries to leverage the large technological savvy and youthful population to shape the future of payments to drive financial inclusion, intra-continent trade activities, and promote overall economic growth,” he added.
On the domestic front, the governor said the central Bank has pursued various initiatives over the years to make payment across platforms faster, cheaper, and more efficient.
He said the Bank launched the mobile money interoperability system in 2018, linking distinct mobile money platforms and bank accounts and the national electronic payment platform, the e-zwich. “This singular policy intervention has enabled individuals and enterprises to move funds across networks. At present, mobile money volume of transactions through the interoperability platform has increased over ten-fold since inception,” the governor added.