The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has held bilateral talks with the President of Estonia Alar Karis and Prime Minister Kaja Kallas in the Estonian capital, Tallinn on Wednesday January 24, 2024.
Dr. Bawumia is in Estonia, regarded as one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world, for a three-day working visit.
The Vice President, who arrived in the Capital Wednesday afternoon, went straight into meetings with the President and Prime Minister.
At both meetings, the hosts shared how their country’s investment in digitalisation, and their commitment to implementing same, in over two decades now, have resulted in a massive economic transformation; while Dr. Bawumia also shared Ghana’s digitalisation story of the past seven years, and how it is already positively impacting the nation, especially in combating corruption, making things easier for the people and impacting on government revenue.
Interestingly, inspite of being years ahead of Ghana in its digitalisation journey, Estonia’s digitalisation, christened e-Estonia, shares striking similarities with Ghana’s, especially with both countries building their digitisation framework on their digital national identity cards.
Other areas similar are digital address system, online government services; labelled e-Government in Estonia and Ghana.Gov in Ghana, as financial inclusion, which has significantly boosted online banking and mobile money transactions, respectively.
Later in the day, Dr. Bawumia held talks with officials at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digitalization.
The Ghanaian delegation, led by Dr. Bawumia, and officials of the Ministry led by Luukas Ilves, Undersecretary for Digital Transformation, Government CIO, had extensive discussions on the impact of digitalisation on economic transformation.
While the Estonian officials shared their experiences on the impact of their country’s digitalisation on many aspects of their economy, including jobs, services and taxation, Dr. Bawumia also shared Ghana’s story of how the digitalisation of government services is boosting efficiency, helping in the fight against corruption and also boosting government revenue generation.
The second leg of Dr. Bawumia’s working visit continues on Thursday January 25.