Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has been named among the 100 most influential personalities in Africa.
The exclusive list of transformational African leaders was compiled by the revered Pan African publication, the New African Magazine, which seeks to recognise, acknowledge, and honour a rare breed of transformational African leaders, whose works are truly transforming lives and making telling impacts on their respective countries and on the African continent.
Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia was selected in the category of influential Leaders, along with Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Mackey Sall of Senegal and William Ruto of Kenya.
Others were African Development Bank (AfDB) President Akinwumi Adesina, Afriexim Bank President Professor Benedict Oramah, among others.
Dr. Bawumia was recognized for his relentless efforts at spearheading Ghana’s digitization as a core economic strategy to solve socio-economic problems.
Naming Dr. Bawumia as one of Africa’s most influential leaders, the publication eulogised the Vice President for his transformational leadership, noting that his reforms are setting “unique precedents on the African continent.”
‘The Oxford-trained economist, former Deputy Governor of Ghana’s Central Bank and Vice President of the Republic of Ghana since 2017, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia is spearheading Ghana’s digitization as a core economic strategy to solve socio-economic problems, formalise and build a more inclusive economy, deal with corruption and to provide social services more effectively,” the Magazine wrote.
“His reforms are setting a unique precedent on the continent. His digitisation agenda has resulted in the implementation and adoption of a National Identification System, a Digital Property Addressing System, and a Mobile Money Interoperability System. This is enabling a new set of opportunities for the consumer including mobile wallets and greater financial inclusion.”
“Bawumia sees technology as the key to transforming the economy and delivering essential services,” the publication added.
Dr. Bawumia was also commended by the magazine for initiating Ghana’s recent oil for gold barter initiative, which seeks to pay for imported oil with Ghana’s gold, paying with its reserved US Dollars – a smart move to curb the depreciation of the Cedi, as well as control the rising cost of fuel in the country.
With the transformational policies Dr. Bawumia has championed, Ghana has achieved the following: successfully issued digital national identity cards to Ghanaian nationals and residents, become the first African country to adopt a national digital property address system, become the first African country to implement mobile money interoperability between mobile money accounts and bank accounts, been ranked number one in terms of access to financial inclusion in Africa, become the first country in Africa to implement a universal QR Code payment system and Ghana has also become the first country in the world where banks have issued their own mobile money wallets known as GhanaPay.
Through his digitisation initiatives, Ghana has also become the world’s largest provider of medical delivery services using Zipline drones to deliver medical supplies to remote parts of the country in real time.
Ghana has also become the first country in Africa to implement a national scale E-Pharmacy digital platform, and the country has also digitized the provision of government services using a common digital portal (Ghana.gov), as well as a common digital platform for property taxation in Ghana-all contributing immensely to revenue mobilization.
New Africa Magazine’s latest honour, adds to the growing list of international acknowledgements of Dr Bawumia, for his starring role in Ghana’s acclaimed digitisation drive.
Recently, the UNDP, through its country rep, Angela Rusigi, described Dr. Bawumia as a “champion of digitization”, adding that his efforts have contributed to ‘inclusive and accelerated development’.