Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is advocating for a policy shift from the adoption of a single currency among African countries to interconnected payment platforms, including interoperable Mobile Money services.
He believes this approach would better bridge the financial divide and boost intra-Africa trade.
While African leaders have traditionally focused on macroeconomic stability as a key factor for a common currency, Dr. Bawumia argues that the continent’s inability to meet economic convergence criteria highlights the need for financial interoperability systems to achieve seamless payment regimes.
“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.”
“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.”
Dr. Bawumia made these remarks as the guest speaker at the opening of the Continental Mobile Interoperability Symposium organized by the Africa Prosperity Network in Accra.
“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,” he added.
The event, themed “Scaling-up interoperability, Using Mobile Money to Buy and Sell.
Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison, acknowledged that achieving broad financial sector inclusion and inter-trade in Africa hinges on a harmonized regulatory framework and partnerships among digital space players.