Stronger Govt, Private Sector Partnership Needed for Technological Advancement - CEOs Advocate

By Jonathan Donkor

Some Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) have advocated a stronger partnership between the government and private sector to leverage technological advancement for economic gains.

For them, technology has become the key driver of the transformation of businesses, governance, economy and the solution to societal challenges and required combined efforts.

At the launch of the 4th Ghana CEOs Summit in Accra yesterday, they envisaged that the country would be left behind if stakeholders did not double their steps in policy development and other areas.

The CEOs include Mr Yoofi Grant of Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), Mr Martin Atta-Fynn of Deloitte Ghana, Mr Julian Opuni of Fidelity Bank and Mr Kojo Choi of Payswitch.

The summit is an annual gathering of CEOs to discuss diverse business related issues. This year's edition is dubbed, "The futuristic economy: technology-driven future business and governance for economic transformation."

It is slated for May 20 and 21, 2019, in Accra with 400 CEOs expected to attend.

In the estimation of Mr Atta-Fynn, the private sector had the capacity to drive the technological change and could share its expertise to support the digitisation agenda of the government.

He cited the possibility of running several services in the area of health, banking, tax payment, security, justice delivery via servers and noted that even though the government had made some strides, more should be done.

Mr Opuni listed connectivity, literacy, and cost of mobile phones, as some of the challenges with technology in Africa that required the implementation of a continental strategy to overcome.

He said with the use of technology, the country could improve tax mobilisation, adding that no industry could survive without technology since the business terrain was changing rapidly.

In his submission, Mr Choi said the top businesses worldwide including Facebook, Samsung and Amazon, were technology driven and this was a wakeup call to harness technology in activities.

For Mr Yoofi, mobile money transactions reaching about 50 billion cedis last year, was an indication that Ghanaians were embracing technology for which reason efforts were being made by the government to formalise the economy.

He said there were enormous opportunities to be grabbed through technology.

Explaining the choice of theme, CEO of the summit Mr Ernest De-graft Egyir said it was due to the significant changes technology had driven in the last few years and the prospect it had created for economic growth.

The summit, he said, would create the platform for holistic discussions on the right strategies needed to be adopted by the public and private sectors to benefit from technology.

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