How Bawumia Intends to Fight Corruption Through Digitalization | Politics

One of the greatest banes of Ghana over the years has been the issue of corruption with millions of dollars going down the drain by various corrupt acts.

Over the years, successive governments have expressed desire to tackle the issue but the canker keeps festering as the approach to fighting it has always been the same.

In view to this, NPP Flagbearer, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has devised a new way in the fight against corruption using digitalization which has already prevented several age-old corrupt practices and saved the nation millions of dollars.

At the launch of his manifesto over the weekend, Dr. Bawumia reiterated his commitment and passion to continue fighting corruption.

Also, one of the many ways Dr. Bawumia has adopted to curb this menace is his Ghana Card initiative which has helped to remove ghost names on government payroll.

Dr. Bawumia, in his manifesto, detailed his effective method at fighting corruption and below is how he will deal with it under his Presidency:

Ladies and Gentlemen, one of the most potent weapons against corruption is transparency. Many corrupt activities are cash-based.

Apart from the obvious economic benefits of moving in the direction of a cashless society, the literature does indicate that the more electronic payments are used in transactions as opposed to cash, the more there is traceability and therefore the less the corruption.

I would like to bring Ghana close to a cashless economy in the shortest possible time. So far the Bank of Ghana, has made a lot of progress in this direction by putting in place a lot of the systems and infrastructure required.

These include mobile money interoperability, merchant interoperability, Universal QRCode payment system, Gh-Link, debit cards, Ezwich, and GhanaPay. We have put in place the necessary infrastructure for Ghana to go cashless.

Recently the Bank of Ghana has completed a pilot of a digital version of the Ghana cedi in Sefwi Wiawso. This is known as central bank digital currency (CBDC) or e-cedi. The e-cedi is designed to work online and offline and will be launched by the Bank of Ghana in due course.

The e-cedi, will be the ultimate weapon in our fight against corruption because it will provide transparency, reduce the risk of fraud, robbery, tax avoidance, and money laundering since it will be easy to track the movement of money and identify suspicious activity. The e-cedi will quicken the pace of Ghana’s move towards a cashless or near cashless society.

We will also implement blockchain technology and smart contracts for secure data exchange and transparent e-government services.

Employing a distributed ledger technology improves transparency and efficiency. This will make all government transactions permanently traceable and not subject to alteration