Ghana deepens nationwide drive for financial inclusion, trains 50,000 graduate
Following the successful completion of Trainer-of-Trainers (ToT) workshop for the roll-out of a nationwide financial inclusion, the government of Ghana is set to employ 50,000 graduates under the “Youth in Revenue Mobilisation” programme to train more across the country.
The 50,000 graduate youths would be trained to provide access to financial services in all the 216 districts across the 10 regions of Ghana.
Though issues bordering on financial inclusion had been selective attention in Nigeria over the years, investigations showed that no such expanded national programme had been planned.
The scheme powered by the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) will dwell on Digital Financial Services (DFS) with special focus on Agent Network Management.
During the ToT workshop, sessions covered include Anti-Money Laundering, Know Your Customer, financial inclusion, interoperability, the DFS regulatory framework, DFS product development and value added services, liquidity management, branding and emerging issues in DFS.
Participants who numbered 28 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.
UNDP noted that the innovative project would offer Ghanaians home and abroad a more reliable, convenient and secured 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 bank.
Giving an insight on the Workshop, the Economic Officer for UNDP, Mr. Kordzo Sedegah, observed that “The collaboration between UNCDF and UNDP is a purposeful one that will 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 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. These are SDG 1 (‘No poverty’), SDG 2 (‘No hunger’), SDG 5 (‘Gender equality’), SDG 8 (‘Good jobs and economic growth’) and SDG 10 (‘Reduced inequalities’)”.
Statistics show that Ghana currently has about 70 per cent of its population excluded from the financial mainstream. This means that this population is denied any of the benefits which the “banked” population enjoys from the financial sector including personal accounts and other products.
However, since recently, Ghana has made significant progress in its financial inclusion efforts. Some of the efforts had been traced to the growing technological relationship now growing between Ghana and Rwanda which is adjudged as emerging Africa’s ICT hub.
