Intra-Africa Trade: Interconnected payment system a better alternative – Dr. Bawumia

Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has suggested that given the difficulty African countries have encountered in having a single currency to facilitate trade, interconnected payment systems, including mobile money interoperability, are a better way to strengthen trade between and among African countries.

Dr. Bawumia urged African countries to put their focus on these systems rather than seek to have a single currency, which can only be achieved when all interested members meet a convergence criterion.

He stressed that cross-border trade in Africa can be boosted with well-implemented interconnected payment systems.

“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,” Dr. Bawumia argued.

Speaking as a guest speaker at the opening of the Continental Mobile Interoperability Symposium put together by the Africa Prosperity Network in Accra, Dr. Bawumia explained that digitalization and digital payment systems have made the need to have a single currency obsolete and African countries must embrace these new systems.

“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… 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 explained.

Mobile money interoperability allows users across networks to send and receive money.

Dr. Bawumia, who has championed digitalization since 2017, was key to achieving interoperability in Ghana.