Let’s celebrate Africa’s financial traders
The financial market globally has seen one of the most dramatic changes in regards to the insurgence of technology in the past decade after the last financial depression in 2009.
The global market is currently seen to have opened up to digitalisation thus opening up to everybody to play fair as compared to in the 70's when it was just governments and big financial institutions who could indulge.
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The adaptation of these new innovations and technologies on the market has not been very smooth as governments all over the world are still adjusting to the pros and cons of these developments.
The African economy is suffering the most as it’s struggling to keep up with these innovations due to lack of proper systems to back these technologies and support such innovations.
It is paramount to emphasise that the next decade would have the world running on robotics and automations, making human labour a thing of the past.
Banks in Africa are fast moving onto the online banking systems, applications that are removing the need for customers presence at banking halls. The digital economy has become the new norm and at a disadvantage to the Labour force.
FOREX trading, a nonstarter for most governments undoubtedly stands out to be a growing interest in the African financial economy currently.
As a digital financial instrument, the sector possesses enormous amounts of career and financial opportunities that the African youth is gradually gearing towards as an alternative career path looking at the unemployment situations in the region.
Appropriately, 15 per cent of the 1.2 billion population of Africans is said to be engaged in the digital financial market, a current report by Forbes indicated Africa’s adoption of bitcoin (cryptocurrency) is the highest globally with Nigeria leading the chart, an intriguing data that needs further investigation.
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Ghana’s example
The Ghana Security and Exchange Commission and the Bank of Ghana have acknowledged the importance of these digital innovations especially the blockchain technology.
An article released by the Bank of Ghana indicated their interest in the blockchain technology and their preparedness to adopt the technology to improve the nation’s payment systems.
They also buttressed this point by promising to make currency trading their priority.
Ghana currently stands to be the first African country to have plans of introducing a digital e coin to back its fiat currency CEDI to stability and to properly compete on the global market, a step in the right direction.
As the country’s economy is opening up to new innovations, there is the need for the labour force to meet this opportunity with the relevant technical know-how and preparedness in the digital financial market.
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The recognition
It is in this light that the African Financial Traders Organisation, a team of financial market trading experts and analysts have put together an award scheme dubbed: African Financial Traders Awards (AFTA) to honour institutions and personalities who have had exceptional impact on the financial front in this regard.
The award is aimed at raising professional execution and transparency standards among financial market players in Africa.
AFTA is a benchmark award scheme to elevate financial market participants with excellent performance.
The award also attempts to reward and recognise financial market participants featuring breakthrough innovations and excellent results in the financial industry across Africa.
The third edition of the award scheme would be launched on December 11 in Accra.
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Great impact
The organisation hopes this serves as the beginning of great impact and encouragement for upcoming/enthusiastic financial experts to work prudently.
The financial market globally has shifted from traditional commerce to ecommerce and it’s about time that the Ghanaian industry follows suit.
We have no other choice but to change our money game.
The writer is the founder of Elevator Ghana Forex Project.