Nationwide financial inclusion drive to be rolled out soon
The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), has organised a workshop to lay the foundation for the roll-out of the nationwide financial inclusion drive.
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The successful end of the trainer-of-trainers workshop is now expected to pave the way for the employment of 50,000 graduates who will be trained to provide access to financial services in all the 216 districts across the 10 regions of Ghana.
The project will offer all Ghanaians home and abroad a more reliable, convenient and secure access to financial services based on the deployment of state-of-the-art technologies to eliminate fraud, drive transaction costs down significantly and empower every citizen to access formal banking.
The nationwide financial inclusion drive will be strategically propelled by the deployment of digital financial services (DFS) in collaboration with Eban Capital Limited and key government institutions with support from the UNCDF.
About the workshop
The workshop was on DFS with special focus on agent network management.
The sessions covered areas, including anti-money laundering, know your customer (“KYC”), financial inclusion, interoperability, the DFS regulatory framework, DFS product development and value added services, liquidity management, branding and emerging issues in DFS.
There were also interactive sessions and case studies, including group activities on regulation and procedures.
The workshop brought together 28 participants who were selected from Eban Capital, Aya Technologies AG, YEA, UNCDF and the UNDP.
They also included representatives of banks, financial technology companies, non-governmental and private organisations and some stakeholders in the financial inclusion space.
Deploying 4.5 million youth
The Group Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Eban Capital, Mr J.S Amegah, said the workshop had been extremely useful for network management as it sought to equip and deploy about 4.5 million youth as network managers across Africa to support the value delivery system.
“This is one of the quickest means for countries such as Ghana to achieve a cash-lite economy and unprecedented socio-economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction.
“Eban Capital is happy to partner with government institutions and the private sector players in Ghana to create 50,000 direct jobs for our graduates, who would be trained to employ 150,000 more merchants over the next two years to drive Ghana's digital economy and impact over eight million lives in our rural communities," Mr Amegah said.
Purposeful collaboration
The Economic Officer for UNDP, Mr Kordzo Sedegah, added that the collaboration between UNCDF and UNDP was a purposeful one that would lead to improving financial inclusion and ultimately human development in Ghana.
“Access to finance improves businesses, and when businesses improve, people make money and when people make money, there will be reduction in crime and everyone will have a peace of mind. Our commitment is playing out in the depth and breadth of support we are investing in this project which would contribute directly to Ghana’s achievement of five out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals,” he indicated.
Bringing informal to formal leveraging on technology
The Programme Specialist for UNCDF, Hermann Messan, said the training formed part of a whole campaign dubbed 'Bringing Informal to formal leveraging on technology'.
He said it was a three tier approach at ensuring that those who were financially excluded would be included in accessing financial services.
“This effort has yielded some remarkable results for which informal savings groups have been given representation and recognition in the national financial inclusion strategy. I entreat all participants to join the campaign to ensure that we reach the last mile with financial services together in order that no one is left behind," he added.