Bawumia meets Estonian President, Prime Minister
The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, yesterday held separate bilateral talks with the President of Estonia Alar Karis and Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in the Estonian capital, Tallin.
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The meetings formed part of Dr Bawumia’s three-day working visit to Estonia to among other things, observe at close hand, how the digital economy of that country works.
Estonia is regarded as one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world.
First day
The Vice President, who left Accra last Tuesday, arrived in Tallin yesterday and went straight into meetings with the President and Prime Minister on the first day.
Dr Bawumia also held talks with officials at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.
He was also taken round some of the facilities driving Estonia’s digital progress.
Talks
In the respective meetings, the hosts shared how their country's investment in digitalisation, and their commitment to implementing same, in over two decades now, have resulted in a massive economic transformation.
They shared their country’s experiences on the impact of digitalisation on many aspects of their economy, including jobs, services and taxation.
Dr. Bawumia also shared Ghana's digitalisation story of the past seven years, and how it is already positively impacting the nation, especially in combating corruption, making things easier for the people and impacting on government revenue.
The meeting with officials of the Ministry led by the Undersecretary for Digital Transformation, Government CIO Luukas Ilves, was extensive discussion on the impact of digitalisation on economic transformation.
Similarities
Inspite of being years ahead of Ghana in its digitalisation journey, Estonia's digitalisation, christened e-Estonia, shares striking similarities with Ghana's, especially with both countries building their digitisation framework on their digital national identity cards.
Other areas similar are digital address system, online government services; labelled e-Government in Estonia and Ghana.Gov in Ghana, as financial inclusion, which has significantly boosted online banking and mobile money transactions, respectively.
Digitalisation
Since becoming Vice-President in 2017, Dr Bawumia has been at the forefront of the digitalisation policies of the government.
These include, the introduction of the mobile money interoperability, digital property address system, the Ghana.gov platform, the National Identification cards, paperless port system and the online passport and driver license application.
The Vice-President would return to Ghana on Saturday (January 27, 202