The 4th Industrial Revolution is here, whether we like it or
not. Ghana, as part of the global economy, can choose to watch yet another
innovation passes us by, or we can jump onboard and even in many aspects, lead
the way.
In the entire Ghanaian political landscape, there is only one politician
pushing Ghana into the future rather than into the past.
Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has staked a huge chunk of his
political capital on the digitalisation agenda. Amidst heavy opposition,
Bawumia has forged ahead.
Ghana needs the digitalisation agenda, mainly for a few very important reasons
I’ll illustrate below.
Oftentimes with such sweeping changes, we have to take the long view, something
Ghanaians are notoriously bad at.
Nevertheless, bear with me and I’ll lay out the case for why Bawumia’s
digitalisation is the future Ghana needs.
Stay ahead of the curve
The future is already here. The 4th industrial revolution Bawumia often speaks
of is not a mirage approaching lazily on the distant horizon – it’s already
here and transforming economies.
The 21st century is entirely about transitioning to a digital world. We were
already headed there, but the coronavirus pandemic of the past few years
hastened the process. Now we have more people working from home than ever. New
apps spring up every day to make life easier for the ordinary citizen as every
aspect of our lives gets more digitalised.
Why not digitalise our economy and systems, too? There are massive benefits to
be reaped from moving to a digitalised system, but most importantly, there are
advantages to getting there faster than everyone else.
Every single day, we hear of one more aspect of Bawumia’s digital agenda which
is either the first in Africa or one of the first in Africa. The drone service,
the electronic pharmacy platform, the fully integrated mobile interoperability
– the list goes on and on.
The agenda is setting Ghana up to be ahead of our peers, to be far more ready
than anyone else to take advantage of this new world order.
There will come a time when Africa would have to join the rest of the world in
going completely digital and when it comes – Ghana will be far more ready than
any other country on the continent to roll with it, take advantage of rising
opportunities and become a leader of the entire continent – essentially staying
ahead of the curve. The benefits we will reap from that early advantage will be
enormous.
Fix government finances
Africa has a big problem called under-development. The reasons are plentiful –
we can start all the way back at the legacy of slavery, colonialism and
imperialism, but also constant post-colonial coup d’etats and their attendant
instability, corrupt mismanagement of resources by politicians and bad or
completely terrible trade deals negotiated by those same politicians – the list
goes on and on.
Ghana is no exception. And despite attempting to fix these issues for so long,
we have completely been unable to. The Ghanaian politician is either unwilling
or unable to turn things around to fix the problem.
Only one man appears to have identified the issue, and that is Ghana’s Vice
President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia. Bawumia postulates that a lot of Africa’s
problems (or underdeveloped economies in general) lie at the feet of inadequate
government revenue generation.
In a speech at the 10th annual International Tax Conference of the Chartered
Institute of Taxation, Bawumia brilliantly identified the problem – and he was
100% right.
He said due to a lack of proper systems, underdeveloped countries cannot raise
enough money for development. Couple with rampant corruption and the little
that is raised is also heavily misused by those in charge. Under such
circumstances, can we ever develop?
Diagnosing the problem is only half the battle, the other half is proposing a
solution, and that is where digitalisation comes in.
Bawumia’s digitalisation agenda tackles the problem in two-folds – collecting
the data of all Ghanaians is how you widen the tax net and increase domestic
tax revenue to record levels. That is sorted with the Ghana card registration
drive, as all Ghana card numbers will now serve as tax identification numbers.
The second solution is to ensure this revenue is not wasted, and that is solved
by digitalising operations of all government agencies, putting the work in the
hands of computers rather than leaving the majority of it to the fallible
human. The digitalisation of operations at among others, the passport office,
DVLA and other institutions, ensure that corrupt middlemen are cut out. Hitherto,
they received the biggest chunk of the pie, whilst now citizens can pay for
their service, receive it promptly and the government receives the requisite
revenue its services generate.
That is the future Ghana needs – a future where the government raises enough
money, wastes less and hence does more for the ordinary Ghanaian.
Ease of access
Finally, Bawumia’s digitalisation agenda is the future Ghana needs because it
is aimed at making life easier for Ghanaians. The entire concept of science and
technology is predicated on inventing solutions to make life easier for people.
Digitalisation is the next step in that regard and Bawumia’s agenda is already
making life considerably easier for Ghanaians.
Firstly, the ghana.gov platform, where all government services can be accessed
by the ordinary person, has completely revolutionised the concept of getting a
public service done, as we hinted in the previous section.
Once upon a time, you had to leave your home or office and journey to a
government office to get something done. Most at times when you get there, you
had to join a long queue to get your service rendered. It could take anywhere
from weeks to months to get what you need and if you wanted a shortcut you
probably had to find someone and pay them a huge sum of money to get it done
through the backdoor.
All that is gone now as Ghanaians can now apply for almost any service they
need from the comfort of their homes on the ghana.gov platform. In many
instances, you can also get your completed documents delivered to you at your
home due to your digital address – that’s tangibly making life easier for
people.
As already mentioned, medical drones are also helping to deliver blood and
other life-saving medical supplies to remote areas – literally saving lives.
Mobile money interoperability lets you have a bank account in your pocket – and
you can even apply for one from home and get it as well.
The digital address makes it a hundred times easier to order things online and
get them to your home rather than in the past when you needed to provide a
landmark address.
The newly launched national electronic pharmacy platform (NEPP) means you can
order lifesaving drugs from the comfort of your home.
The list goes on and on. The digital agenda is aimed at making life much easier
for the ordinary Ghanaian as it leverages technology to make all services more
efficient, faster and easier to be delivered to the customer.
Can anyone honestly say that’s not the future they want? We cannot remain stuck
in the past and do everything in person – digitalisation allows us to move
things to a new level, get services rendered faster and enable us to focus our
precious time on our work, increasing productivity and other attendant
benefits.
Conclusion
If you look around the Ghanaian political landscape, no one else is even
talking about digitalisation, which as shown above is clearly essential in the
current global setup.
Bawumia is literally ahead of his time, he is looking to the future whilst
others are looking to the past or worse, have no plan at all.
We have heard it and seen it all from our politicians and none of them offers
anything new. Our problems have existed for half-century since independence and
will continue for another half century if we remain glued to the status quo.
Unquestionably, Bawumia’s digital agenda is the future Ghana needs. It
identifies problems in the current system and proposes fixes that are tangibly
and objectively, better than whatever was there before.
We are in the 21st century and our problems require 21st-century solutions. We
have to stand up and demand that from our politicians now, and Bawumia is head
and shoulders ahead of his peers in steering the country in that direction
already.
Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana