Africa can handle harsher economic challenges with technology – Bawumia

Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has called on African countries to adopt a technological approach to development in order to handle global economic challenges.

According to him, the COVID-19 Pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine conflict have exposed gaps in the world’s economic and political architecture, which will affect Africa’s quest for growth.

“If the continent does not act decisively to build technological industries that are more resilient to global economic shocks. It is clear that countries that depend mostly on primary industries suffer harsher consequences when the global economy takes a nosedive than those that have diversified their economies through higher technology inputs.

“The challenges that have beset the global economy may have been fuelled by temporary crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine conflict. But these challenges are still a wakeup call to Africa that there are deep structural gaps in the global economic and political architecture that can frustrate its rise, unless serious concerted efforts are made to plug them,” Dr. Bawumia disclosed in his address at the high-level African Union-backed “BOMA” forum on Friday.

The Boma forum brought together global political and business leaders to deliberate on the progress of Africa towards Agenda 2063, the AU’s timetable for transforming Africa into a global economic force.

Dr. Bawumia also indicated that Ghana has commenced, as part of its path to economic development marked by increasing technological in digitization content in its development programs.

Touching on the challenges to optimally harness data, talent, and improved regulations to advance the course of technological advancement, Dr. Bawumia said, “if the massive shifts currently underway, such as the fast emergence of a new type of internet, are to benefit, rather than further marginalize Africa, the continent must make the right investments now.

“We are very mindful of these potential pitfalls and are investing in both the institutions and infrastructure that will enable us to both leapfrog our infrastructure and education system limits and rapidly advance the regulatory capabilities we need to deal with complex challenges like balancing sovereignty and efficiency, as we become a data-driven economy.”

He continued: “We have successfully developed new identity infrastructure that will transform credit scoring for SMEs, remove the bottlenecks in e-commerce and lay the ground for the modernization of business supportive government services.”

“We have totally transformed the financial technology landscape and reworked our mobile telecom industry to enable us take advantage of the 5G revolution and the internet of things as they gather pace.

“No one who has followed our policy journey in Ghana can doubt our total commitment to the technological approach to development.”