Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, the Flagbearer of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), said the nation’s ability to make the most of the fourth industrial revolution is now more important than ever before.
The Government’s investments within the digital landscape ripened the grounds for Ghana to take full advantage of the ongoing fourth industrial revolution to attain exceptional excellence.
Addressing a packed auditorium of the Ho Technical University during his “youth connect” programme in the Volta Region, Dr Bawumia said Ghana’s advancing digital landscape should encourage and facilitate a national progression towards competitive industrialisation.
He outlined the numerous investments in digital infrastructure, which should be the base for the launch of Ghana’s industrialisation.
“I looked at the fourth industrial revolution where the world was going, and it is said that this world is going to be a digital world. We are moving in the fourth industrial revolution into the digital era, and Ghana and Africa, we missed the first industrial revolution, we missed the second and third, and we don’t have to miss the fourth…,” he said.
“We have to be ready, and I even believe that we can do even better in the fourth industrial revolution than many of the advanced countries that we see. It is possible.”
Dr Bawumia said digital IDs remained the foundation for any digital society, therefore the Government dedicatedly invested in the successful rollout of the Ghana Card, resulting in close to 20 million of the about 30 million population securely captured in a consolidated national database.
He touched on how mobile money interoperability had also been pursued to finality with the nation attaining 100 per cent access to financial inclusion, adding that with a world class digital address system, Ghana was well positioned for industrialisation in the new world.
The Vice President said the bundle of digital investments set the grounds for the development of an individual credit scoring system, which would be introduced by the Government in the coming months.
“Very soon I will launch an individual credit scoring system. It will enable us to get access to lots of commodities,” he said.
The Government has established the ghana.GOV, a single point digital access platform for various payment and transactional services for the public sector, which the Vice President said had more than 1,500 non-fungible data (NFTs).
Dr Bawumia spoke of how the nationwide drone service for medical deliveries was second to none and coupled with the networking of hospitals across the country, health delivery had been revolutionised.
The present digital landscape greatly propelled the fight against corruption and through the national ID and other systems, hundreds of millions were being saved the nation in the area of ghost names on government payrolls, he said.
Dr Bawumia, who seized the opportunity to share with the youth his vision as flagbearer of the NPP, said a government under his leadership would transform agriculture on the commercial scale using digital technology, invest heavily in solar power, and reform Ghana’s tax regime.
GNA
MA/BM/ABD
1 June 2024
Pic attached
