On Monday, the Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison, told the press that Ghana’s work on a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is quite advanced.
“The Bank of Ghana was one of the first African central banks to declare that we were working on a digital currency and looking at the concept of an e-Cedi,” said Addison. “We are quite advanced in that process.”
He explained that there’s a need to approach the project in phases and outlined three stages prior to deciding to launch. These are a design phase, an implementation stage and a pilot phase. The design stage is advanced, and the current focus is on the implementation phase.
“After the implementation phase, we will have a pilot phase where a few people would be able to use it, use the electronic Cedi on the mobile applications and other payment applications that are currently running,” he said.
“And then from that pilot we will be able to determine if this is feasible and what sort of things need to be tweaked in order to make it work effectively.”
The Governor stated that it would publish more details soon.
Other African states that are exploring CBDC include Morocco, South Africa, Egypt (as of 2018), and possibly Kenya, although the Governor described the bank as ‘on the fringes’ of the exploration by global central banks.
