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Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia delivered a public lecture on Ghana’s digital economy on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, at Ashesi University. He said the current administration had made some monumental gains at digitising Ghana as never witnessed since independence.
Fact-Check Ghana has verified some of the claims and found them to be false and misleading. Here are the claims and the verdicts:
Claim 1: “Again, I believe the motor insurance database I believe I don’t know of any African Country that has put together this motor insurance database. Ghana is the first to do so.”
Verdict: Completely False
Explanation: Ghana began implementing the Motor Insurance Database on January 1, 2020, to provide a centralised system from which security agencies and the general public, including passengers of vehicles, could check the validity of vehicle insurance instantly.
But before Ghana took this initiative, some African countries had undertaken massive projects that compiled a comprehensive database of the motor insurance sector 10 years before Ghana’s rolled out.
One of such countries is Nigeria.
Nigeria’s Insurance Industry Database (NIID) was meant to get rid of fake motor insurance certificates on Nigerian roads, the menace of fake insurance papers and insurance racketeers.
The Director-General of the Nigerian Insurance Association, Yetunde Ilori, in an interview with the media in July 2020 said “the NIID system, now in its 10th year of implementation, has been effective in transforming the motor insurance policy landscape of the industry,” adding that the NIIP – a unified platform for the sale of Motor Third Party Insurance cover, had since been deployed and is running live for business transactions.
In 2019, the Association said it generated about N196 million from data upload on the Nigerian Insurance Industry Database (NIID) in the 2019 business operation.
Claim 2: “…Ghana is the first country in Africa … to achieve this type of interoperability between bank accounts and mobile wallets…”
Verdict: False
Explanation: The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, together with the Government of Ghana, the central bank, GhIPSS and commercial banks on 10th May 2018, launched the first phase of the mobile money interoperability system.
The Mobile Money Payment Interoperability is the service that allows direct and seamless transfer of funds from one mobile money wallet to another mobile money wallet across networks. It was developed by Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS) with the active collaboration of the telecom industry.
Six months later, on Wednesday, November 28, 2018, the second phase of the project was launched.
Dr Bawumia said the launch completed the “Financial Inclusion Triangle because it interconnects three payment platforms; mobile money, bank account and e-zwich.”
Before Ghana had contemplated this move, Tanzania was already benefiting from the usage of the mobile money interoperability system.
In September 2014, a GSMA report on Tracking the Journey Towards Mobile Money Interoperability noted that Tanzania effectively launched Account to Account interoperability to facilitate payments by mobile networks.
“Indeed, there’s precedent in Tanzania, the first African country to adopt interoperability, where there has been increased transactions among users. It’s a measure that’s also been adopted in Kenya and Ghana,” the report partly reads.
Fact-Check Ghana also spoke with some Tanzanian citizens to confirm if indeed the type of interoperability between bank accounts and mobile wallets works in the country.
“Yes, it’s very convenient to send money from one’s mobile account to a different mobile account or bank,” Hussein Bin, a photographer and youth activist in Tanzania, said. He added that the “charges for the services differ depending on the bank”.
Asked if the type of interoperability works in Tanzania, Lilian Alex, a programme assistant with the East African Civil Society Organisations Forum (EACSOF), based in Arusha, said “Yes, it does.” She confirmed that she has ever used it.
That same report, Tracking the Journey Towards Mobile Money Interoperability, also mentioned Pakistan as the country where Mobile Money Payments and banks were made interoperable through an interbank switch in 2014.
Two other African countries Madagascar and Kenya followed next in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
Far away in Jordan, JoMoPay, an interoperability platform was fully implemented in 2016, all in the bid to promote financial inclusion.
It is, therefore, not true that “Ghana is the first country in Africa … to achieve this type of interoperability between bank accounts and mobile wallets.”
Editor’s note: In the initial report, we indicated that South Africa in 2008 rolled out a National Insurance Database before Ghana. Further checks indicate that the South Africa database was for salvaged vehicles.
Read carefully Dr. Bawumia’s statement.
He said,
“I don’t know of any African country”
I don’t know means,… ‘he is not aware of ‘
That means, he is not aware of any African country that has implemented this policy.
How does someone not knowing something make him a liar ?
Be analytical and sound your judgement
Then what is the essence of research. Are you telling me that, the info The Fourth Estate got, Bawumia and his communication team didn’t get that before his speech.
Freedom or whatever, kindly crosscheck and tell Bawumia to research before throwing dust on Ghanaians eye.
We are happy for his liars. Infact I love them because he need to justify things for Ghanaians to understand why the Cedi is 6+ to $
He couldn’t consult the gods on that and now he is here throwing strong liars about things without researching.
This government is worst…..in Kennedy Agyapong’s voice.
Oh you mean our VIP is that clueless not to know what’s happening in an industry he so much like to boast about? Even if it’s happening just in a neighbouring country like Nigeria?
Then what’s the use of the many aids at his disposal?
Now you have to choose between a clueless VIP or a lying VIP. This is interesting
A learned person should not make a claim based on ignorance, don’t you think so?
Use your head …how does a whole vp who claims to be a digital boss not even do a simple research on it …someone who wants to be a president can’t do a simple research on a system like this.
If he was not sure or aware, he did not need to make that comment in the first place. He further went on to claim that Ghana was the first country to have done that. What else do you need to confirm he was claiming the glory of being the ‘first’ in that direction. The Vice President did not tell the truth, nothing more, nothing less. In fact, he LIED!
What prevented the VIP from checking before making the speech