Second Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana (BoG), Mrs Matilda Asante-Asiedu, has said that the future of finance in Africa must be protected and coordinated.
She says that digital innovation is powerful, but without structure, the continent loses control.
Explaining further, she made the point that the bond and stock markets in Africa are not properly structured. For Africa to be fully resilient and withstand the challenges posed by exogenous factors, she added, the leaders must pull resources together and properly utilise the bond and stock markets.
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the Africa Financial Summit, she said, “When we structure our markets, mobilise our capital, and move from talk to action, we unlock a future built by us and for us. It is time for Africa to build systems that work for us.
“Resilience starts from within and so I think that for Africa to get resilience, Africa has to begin to look inward because we all know what is happening geopolitically in economies of the world.
“Africa has in excess of one trillion in revenue when it comes to pension funds, capital and bond markets, investments in savings, remittances; that is a significant resource.”
She added, “The only difficulty is that it hasn’t been properly channelled into long-term investments
“For Africa to be resilient and to withstand the clear challenges that are presented to us today, I believe that we need to pull those resources and properly structure them. If you take the stock markets, for instance, there are over 30 stock markets and bond markets in Africa, but they are not structured.
“So from Ghana, I cannot go and borrow from the stock market in Kenya, but if that were properly structured, I could actually be borrowing from Kenya and through that, Kenyan investments get returns, and the Ghanaian economy will also grow through the investments that I made.
“So, it requires a lot of political will, but also economic actors really leading the conversation.”
