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.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

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.