Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia
One of the old-time wrist watches, Seiko 5 Automatic, had a fascinating advertisement, “one day all watches will be made this way”. At the time, it was the finest in its class of automatic watches, replacing the Roamers and Prontos.
For those who could not see far into the future, the Seiko commercial sounded outlandish; many years after Seiko 5 Automatic outlived its days as the top of the range watch, time pieces were not only made like it, they were produced even better, advanced digital features et al.
The foregone can be likened to Dr. Bawumia’s epic “when I talk about the link between digitisation and economics some people do not understand”. Such doubting Thomases wondered what digitisation has to do with economics, completely at sea about what the farsighted man was talking about.
It is mandatory to digitise in order to keep abreast with modern trends and enjoy the accruing dividends as being evidenced by today’s trends.
We recall how Dr. Bawumia was derided for, as they put it, veering from the realm of economics into digitisation. For such cynics, the two are poles apart and the linkage between the two not real.
“In this Fourth Industrial Revolution, you must understand the link between digitisation and the economy, and so the digital infrastructure we established were foundation for us to leverage digital technology for economic growth and development,” Dr. Bawumia explained the technological novelty.
Today, the foundation laid, as visionary Dr. Bawumia said, is laying the golden eggs of prosperity. As we relish the goodies of digitisation courtesy of the preceding foundation laid earlier, some have taken things for granted, thinking these dropped from void.
The foundation was laid in varied forms. From the actualisation of the Ghana Card dream to Mobile Money (MoMo) interoperability among others, the grounds were laid and, today, the data from the apex bank stands as testimony to the words of Dr. Bawumia.
Mobile money transactions as captured by Bank of Ghana in 2025 stand at GH¢518 billion, with GH¢39.6 billion sitting in mobile phone money accounts as savings. Such a projection a decade ago would have been unthinkable and the originators of such thoughts would have been regarded as insane.
With cheque transactions now standing at GH¢37.3 billion, it is clear that there is a growing preference for this digitised business transaction by Ghanaians.
Also worth noting is the fact that there are 26.7 million active mobile money numbers in the country.
Where are they who at the time Dr. Bawumia introduced the country to the technological novelty called him names? He was, as he continues to be, too advanced in his search for better ways of doing things via the digitisation platform. Now that he has been vindicated after making digitisation a feature of our part of the world, he deserves plaudits.
It takes the ideas of one man to turn things around. The invention of the railway by the Wright brothers was a major technological breakthrough, taking place at a time of an industrial revolution.
Today, it is possible to avoid handling cash and to rely solely on mobile phone transactions for businesses, thanks to Bawumia’s big ideas.