Ernest Addison: Building a digital business and financial ecosystem

Opening keynote address by Dr Ernest Addison, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, at the Euromoney Ghana / West African Conference, Accra, 25 September 2018.

Salutations...

1. Good morning and it is a pleasure to participate in this Euromoney Ghana/West Africa Conference on building a digital business and financial ecosystem. Before proceeding, let me thank Euromoney for choosing Accra as the host city for this conference and also for providing such a unique platform for industry experts, regulators, and policymakers to deliberate on digitization of business and the financial ecosystem. I believe these deliberations would facilitate and enhance the pursuit of financial inclusion by countries across the West African sub-region.

2. Ladies and Gentlemen, a decade ago the importance and criticality of payment systems was only heard and understood exclusively within banking circles. Payment services were entirely a space dominated by banks.