Ghana’s Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has held bilateral talks with the President of Estonia, Alar Karis and Prime Minister, Kaja Kallas, in the Estonian capital, Tallinn on Wednesday January 24,2024.
Dr. Bawumia is in Estonia, a country regarded as one of the most digitally advanced nations in the world, for a three-day working visit.
The Vice President held meetings with the President and the Prime Minister, respectively.
At both meetings, the hosts shared their perspectives on the country’s investment in digitalisation in the past two decades, which resulted in massive economic transformation.
In the same vein, Dr. Bawumia also shared Ghana’s digitalisation drive over the past seven years, and how it was already having positive impact on the nation, especially in combating corruption, making things easier for the people and impacting on government revenues.
Interestingly, inspite of being years ahead of Ghana in its digitalisation journey, Estonia’s digitalisation, christened e-Estonia, shared
striking similarities with that of Ghana’s journey, especially with both countries building their digitisation framework on their digital national identity cards.
Other areas which the two nations bore similaries include 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.
Later in the day, Dr. Bawumia held talks with officials at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digitalization.
The Ghanaian delegation, led by Dr. Bawumia, and officials of the Ministry led by Luukas Ilves, Undersecretary for Digital Transformation, Government CIO, had extensive discussions on the impact of digitalisation on economic transformation.
While the Estonian officials shared their experiences on the impact of their country’s digitalisation on many aspects of their economy, including jobs, services and taxation, Dr. Bawumia also shared Ghana’s story on how
the digitalisation of government services was boosting efficiency, helping to fight corruption, and boosting government’s revenue generation efforts.
The second leg of Dr. Bawumia’s work visit continues from Thursday January 25.
Source: Ghana News Agency