This year’s MOBEX Africa Tech Expo and Innovation Awards aimed at honouring innovations and inventions has been launched in Accra.

For this year, nominations have been extended to other African countries including Kenya, Nigeria and Senegal as well as the ‘Eva Lokko’ ICT award- a new feature added to the awards scheme.

According to the CEO for Coasters Company Limited, event organisers of MOBEX Africa George Spencer Quaye, the awards will recognize organisations and individuals' contribution to the development of the ICT ecosystem in Ghana.

“It is quite competitive and we hope that the Ghanaian innovators get to show themselves us as worthy champions on the continent,” he told B&FT in an interview during the media launch of the event.

The recognition, he noted will spur innovation and engender creativity amongst Ghanaians accelerating the adoption of technological or ICT tools in the everyday lives of the Ghanaian.

He also added that the focus for this year is on the banking sector, which has been themed, “E-Finance: Future of Payments and Banking. It is geared at engendering confidence in the sector and also embracing the technology.

There are four main thematic areas for the Mobex Africa Innovation Awards which are the Enterprise, Fintech, Governance, Consumer and Social Good, with some new categories added to these four areas.

Except for the Governance category, all other three from Fintech, Enterprise, Consumer and Social Good nominations are open to the public and companies.

The deadline for submission of nominations is Friday 19th July 2019, with over 44 competitive awards up for grabs.

Of the price range, the winner takes home a gold-encrusted plaque as well as with the individual awards the winners get to participate in a technology conference in South Africa.

Dr Amediku Settor, Head of Payment Systems at Bank of Ghana, who represented the central bank Governor, indicated that innovations have brought changes in the payment systems.

He also added that the passage of the Payment Systems and Services Act will open up the payment ecosystems for participation by non-banks entities such as fintechs and other non-banks companies that are keen to partake.

The Head of Payments Systems at BoG also disclosed that a complimentary new payment system strategy is being worked on.

Prof. Narku Quaynor, the chief judge of the Judging Academy, stated that the event will help change the narrative of Africa.

“For us and our businesses to grow it requires us to constantly reimagine the future of Africa. I see an integrated economy with a robust banking sector driving the prosperity of the continent and this can only be made possible with technology” he said.

The Mobex Africa Innovation Awards (MIA) is an industry-specific awards scheme established to honour excellence, innovation and creativity of enterprises and individuals helping transform lives and livelihood using technology and solving socio-economic problems with the deployment of ICT skills and knowledge. MIA was created to help drive the creative, technical, and professional progress of providing solutions to social challenges, enhancing businesses and evolving forms of social interactions.