The Ghanaian government is set to become the first African country to use blockchain technology in its e-government processes, according to the country’s vice president Mahamadu Bawumia.
- •Speaking at the 14th Regional Conference and Annual General Meeting of the heads of African Anti-corruption agencies held in Accra, Bawumia said blockchain will enable government authorities to detect bogus transactions and fraudulent activity in state systems.
- •He also mentioned that blockchain will be a cost-effective way of securing the data of citizens who have embraced the country’s one-stop website ‘ghana.gov.’
- •Other countries that have integrated blockchain technology in their government systems include Estonia, UAE, Australia, Singapore, Georgia, and Sweden.
Since 2020, the Ghanaian government has raked 201 billion cedis in revenue from the services portal, money that could not be obtained initially due to bureaucratic hurdles and time-consuming processes.
During the conference, the vice president also detailed how Ghana intends to introduce a digital currency known as e-Cedi. Once approved by the Central Bank, the digital currency will be easily traceable compared to physical money thus enhancing transparency within government accounts.
“The e-Cedi will be our ultimate weapon in our fight against corruption because it will make it easy to track the movements of money and identify suspicious activities,” Bawumia said.
Blockchain technology’s advanced identification process and decentralized network will enable the prevention of data manipulation within government systems. Bawumia believes that it would be a revolutionary moment when it would be impossible to key in ghost workers or pensioners in governmental payrolls.
Can Digitization Stem Africa’s Corruption?
Kenya has also been at the forefront of service digitization in the region, with the e-Citizen platform simplifying the access to government services. The move to a single paybill number was intended to phase out the numerous payment channels that every government agency had. By December last year, revenue collection by state agencies had risen by 10%.
However, attempts to digitize other state functions like tax collection have been sluggish and largely unsuccessful. While digitization is capable of optimizing transparency, skeptics do not believe corruption in many African states has anything to do with detection. Instead, expediting corruption cases and repatriating lost funds remains a mirage.
In Kenya, for instance, despite vivid reports from the Auditor General’s office of how national and county governments, and government agencies, are expropriating funds, prosecution is mishandled and those responsible evade justice in the few cases that make it to court.
Moreover, a significant part of the government’s spending is legally sanctioned through a bloated wage bill and inflated projects making it harder to define corruption because it is budgeted for. In cases such as these, not even digitization of services can prevent corruption. Without political will, corruption will itself evolve with the tools meant to fight it.
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