Nii Armah Addy, a Management Consultant, has strongly posited that digitizing Ghana’s economy as said by H.E. Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, Vice President of the Republic of Ghana is a worthy idea but it will be considered a cheap talk if the proper physical structures and systems are not in place.
His comments come in reaction to a public lecture delivered by the Vice President at Ashesi University on November 2, 2021 on the theme “Using digitization to transform an economy – The Ghana story”.
In a studio discussion on “Talk of The Nation” on Class FM 91.3mhz on 3rd November, 2021, Nii Armah Addy explained that for digitization to be really effective, it must be operational on structures and systems. “We are not saying digitization is wrong, it is good to digitize, but digitization must go with the presence of structures and systems, other than that you will be digitizing in isolation’’ he strongly expressed.
The Management Consultant further argued that efficient digitization, does not happen in separation of other systems, but goes with a couple of structures.
“When you isolate things they do not work on their own. Effective digitization will mean that we have to segment, focus and be innovative. By segmenting and focusing it means identifying and prioritising the most pressing aspects of the socio-economic life of the populace to digitalize. What percentage of the digitization been preached is a Ghanaian creation from idea, planning, implementation and continuous improvement” he quizzed.
According to Nii Armah Addy, it will make a good argument if the Vice President told his listeners how the inception of the digitized postal address system has increased ecommerce and other aspects of social life in Ghana. “The Vice President should tell Ghanaians with statistical evidence how the inception of the digitized postal address system, has improved ecommerce and in turn has created hundred thousand (100,000) jobs’’. That is the way to link value creation to the digitized postal address system. But to say everybody has digitized postal address system on his wall in isolation does not mean anything”. The value addition of the digitalized postal address system is yet to have significant usage by the larger populace as long as the traditional postal address is the first requirement in filling documents.
In the recent Police, Armed Forces, Fire Service and Immigration Service recruitment exercise characterized by long queues, one wonders how come the process could not be digitized enough to curtail the stress applicants were put through by standing for long hours on the scotching sun.
Nii Armah Addy is of the notion that, the digitization done so far must immediately translate into a palpable socio-economic growth in the day to day affairs of the populace instead of a promise that the impact will be felt when the digitization is completed.
