The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT last week held a day’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) knowledge series on financial inclusion to leverage the potential of using AIs to provide practical solutions to barriers in the financial sector.
The series was for students, innovators, financial services users, enthusiastic stakeholders and industry practitioners. The networking forum sought to provide a platform to support the community-building efforts of the AI ecosystem in Ghana
Speaking at the AI Knowledge Series, Deputy Minister for Communication and Digitization, Ama Pomaa Boateng, said financial inclusion captures seven (7) out of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that government and institutions are working at and using artificial intelligence to solve problems in the sector.
She said AIs are no longer the complex things they used to be but have become simple things, adding government is ready to work with its partners to take the knowledge in Artificial Intelligence to the rural areas as well.
The Director-General of the Kofi Annan ICT Centre, Dr. Collins Yeboah-Afari, stressed on the need to consider barriers that make access to financial knowledge and services limited or unavailable.
He said AI plays an important role in making our lives and financial activities easier and was hopeful that the participants and their organisations will benefit from the knowledge series which will eventually reflect on government’s digitization agenda.
A representative of GIZ, Emmanuel Mumuni, sponsors of the face-to-face series disclosed that the German government through GIZ has instituted a Fair Forward Artificial Intelligence for All project which is looking at how to advance AI for all countries in Africa and India.
He indicated that GIZ is currently working with government to come up with policies in the AI ecosystem, adding that “I know there is a lot of political will and drive from the Ministry to have that done as soon as possible.
The CEO for JidiTrust, an informal digital business school, Delamazior Nyanyo, during her presentation indicated that, globally, there are 1.7 billion people who lack access to financial knowledge and services.
Business Development Manager for Bankingly, Solomon Koomson, on his part said “AI is the future and the success of ‘FinClusion’ depends on it. Let’s adopt AI aggressively in all ‘FinClusion’ activities. In credit scoring, AI helps credit decision makers to achieve faster and more accurate risk assessment.”
BY Gibril Abdul Razak