The Africa Prosperity Network (APN), in collaboration with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, plans to hold an interoperability conference symposium on July 5, 2024, at the Labadi Beach Hotel, in order to promote cross-border mobile roaming and mobile money exchange, as well as to create an interconnected economy across Africa.
During a press briefing on Thursday, June 6 in Accra, the Executive Director for APN, Gayheart Mensah, mentioned that the flagship event aims to address and promote strategies to enhance intra-African trade and financial inclusion through mobile money interoperability.
He hinted that the symposium will be under the theme,” SCALING UP INTEROPERABILITY: USING MOBILE MONEY TO BUY AND SELL ACROSS AFRICA.”
“When we talk about mobile interoperability, it is also about being able to receive and make calls using the phone, particularly within the African continent as the focus now or at the moment is Africa integration, so it’s about your wallet and is about your ability to make calls as well,” Mr. Mensah explained.
Communication Consultant, Gayheart Mensah expressed his excitement about how women are thriving in the fintech economy through Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs), thus, supporting interoperability will promote women in the African Continental Free Trade Area.
“APN believes that supporting interoperability, a Pan-African interoperability, would help promote the extent to which women get integrated in he commerce of this continent”, Mr.Mensah added.
Mr. Gayheart Mensah further called on African leaders across the continent to come together to fully fulfill the APN vision of aligning and integrating with economic players to promote the interoperability agenda across the board.
“We are persuaded that we are at the junction where African leaders must take the center stage in promoting interoperability and not just the political leaders, we are also talking about industry leaders and to the extent whereby we are talking about an international Pan African interoperability.”
Speaking at the event, the chairman of the Africa Prosperity Network, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, urged political and industry leaders to support this initiative to boost intra-African trade.
“We are told that the technology is there. We are told that the resources are there, but it needs political will, it needs the the buy-in of the central banks, it needs the buy-in of the regulators, it needs more importantly, the buy-in of the leadership of the continent leadership and the region’s leadership in the various countries and we believe that if we can get interoperability working, particularly in the areas where tens and millions of medium, small, and microscale enterprises on the continent operate, it will make meaningful, the whole idea of intra-African trade.”
