Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has lauded the collaborative role of the private sector towards the successful implementation of several programmes under the Government’s digitisation agenda.

He said the collaboration has led to major budgetary savings and allowed funds to be used to address other equally pressing national demands.

Vice President Bawumia said this at the Ninth Ghana Information Technology and Telecom Awards (GITTA) in Accra on Friday.

He said the two flagship digitisation projects- the Paperless Ports system and Medical Drone Delivery Service were implemented at zero cost to government’s budget due to the collaboration of the private sector.

“The digitisation process that we have embarked on in the past two and half years has been cost-effective.

"A lot of people see these big projects taking place and they wonder how much it is all costing the budget.

"You take the Paperless Port for example; a very big project that was implemented, but we looked at it and decided that we could get the private sector to pay for it and at the end of the day the private sector - Dubai Ports, West Blue, GCNET - all got together and it did not cost government," the Vice President said.

“We didn’t pay one Pesewa for the whole Paperless Project. We just brought people together, did the process flow and said ‘this is what we want but we don't have money so do it for us’. And they did it for us. This is a really good Corporate Social Responsibility. So the Paperless Ports cost us nothing.

“Similarly, the Zipline Drone project for medical deliveries cost us nothing as far as government budget is concerned. Not one Pesewa of budgetary resources has gone into the medical drone delivery project. We are just using Corporate Social Responsibility; they have really responded well and this programme is working,” Vice President Bawumia stated.

He noted that other digitisation programmes had been implemented at an immensely lower cost than what was previously budgeted for.

“Mobile Payments Interoperability, the first of its kind that we've implemented in Africa - and there's really none that I know of globally - initially was supposed to cost us $1.2 billion.



"I'm sure most of you heard about it. But we were able to do it, including infrastructure, for less than $4.5 million, so that was a major saving. So there's a lot of cost-effectiveness with digitisation as you'll improve a lot of the efficiencies in public administration.

In recognition of his dedication to the digitisation agenda, Vice President Bawumia was adjudged the Digital Leader of the Year at the Awards Night, which brought together all stakeholders in the information communication technology sector.