The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia says the investments the Akufo-Addo government has made in its digitization efforts have put Ghana on the path to becoming one of the most digitized economies in Africa.

He said the Akufo-Addo government inherited an economy that was largely manual with the majority of the population unbanked.

Dr. Bawumia made the assertion in a presentation at the Nation Builders’ Update on Thursday, November 26, 2020.

He said the government’s ability to register more than half of the population for the National ID card and digitizing the process for acquiring a drivers’ licence and passport are but a few of the many digitization interventions that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has introduced.

“Just within the last four years, it’s phenomenal what has happened and Ghana is clearly on its way to becoming one of the most digitized economies in Africa. Specifically, we have registered and issued biometric national ID cards which the NDC government could not do in 8 years. 15.5 million people have been enrolled and the process will be completed in the first half of 2021. This has provided us with a database that will be the anchor for all transactions in the future providing a unique identity to all individuals,” he said.

“We have also implemented a digital address system covering every square inch of land or water in Ghana. In the process, we have identified and provided unique addresses for all properties in Ghana, about 7.5 million properties,” he added.

The Vice President said the previous NDC government did nothing to improve systems that directly impacted service delivery in Ghana.

He said the NDC government superintended over long queues for common services such as renewal of National Health Insurances cards with cash-based transactions being the most common means of payment.
“Most transactions were cash-based, less than 10% of the population had tax identification numbers and obtaining the driver’s license, passport, renewing NHIS card, obtaining birth certificates, manual and cumbersome court processes were not only inefficient and costly, they became breeding grounds for corruption as bribes were demanded to circumvent the cumbersome processes,” he said, adding that despite the many challenges the situation posed to citizens and the Ghanaian economy, no government before Akufo-Addo was able to tackle it.