The Director General for GI-KACE, Dr Collins Yeboah-Afari, has stated that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is critical for the country’s development.

According to him, AI has made life easier in for the financial industry worldwide.

Speaking at the first face-to-face meet-up networking event, organized by the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (GI-KACE) on August 25, he added that Ghana should consider and target barriers that make access to financial knowledge and services limited or unavailable.

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Knowledge Series brought together students, innovators, financial services users, enthusiasticstakeholders and industry practitioners. The networking forum seeks to provide a platform to support the community-building efforts of the AI ecosystem in Ghana.

Speaking at the forum, the Deputy Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ama Pomaa Boateng disclosed that AI is now the driving global digital revolution where problems and challenges for emerging economies are analyzed and solved.

"Financial Inclusion using AI is a very good thing because it is part of the SDGs. It is actually seven out of the 17 goals that government and other institutions are working on using AI to solve problems and getting our Sustainable Development Goals is a big thing to the Ministry,” she said.

The CEO for JidiTrust, an informal digital business school, Delamazior Nyanyo, during her presentation indicated that, globally, there are 1.7 billion people who lack access to financial knowledge and services. She entreated that more people especially girls should get into ICT and focus on AI to help use its services to their full potential and make sound financial decisions.

Also, the Business Development Manager for Bankingly, Solomon Koomson, suggested that; in helping financial inclusion, we need to make data-driven decisions.

“AI is the future and the success of ‘FinClusion’ depends on it. Let’s adopt AI aggressively in all ‘FinClusion’ activities. In credit scoring, AI helps credit decision makers to achieve faster and more accurate risk assessment,” he noted.

The event focusses on impacting financial services and inclusion since is the leading innovation programme targeted at achieving developmental goals.

The AI Knowledge Series was organised in partnership with the Institute of ICT Professionals GH, AI Association Ghana, Runmila AI Institute, GIZ, DTC and Fair Forward.