Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has called on the African continent to shift from a common market economic convergence that focuses on similar policies of inflation, public debt, among others, and instead pursue a continental mobile money interoperability.

According to the Vice President, if successfully adopted, the continent-wide digital payment system will improve intra-African trade.

He insists that it will also promote financial inclusion and formalize businesses on the continent.

Dr. Bawumia, who was addressing the African Prosperity Networking (APN) event in Accra on Friday, argued that this innovation could, in the meantime, substitute Africa's pursuit of a common currency.

"When we think about scaling up mobile money interoperability to the entire continent, I believe that doing so will get at the benefits of a payment system without necessarily having a common currency. That idea of a common currency which came in 1963 has really been overtaken by the digital payments age that today, you can think about mobile money as a common currency if we make it interoperable," the Vice President said.

Executive Chairman and Founder of the APN, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko underscored the need for mobile money interoperability at the continental level to also improve intra-continental trade.

"For a continent, where a majority of our people and their daily wage through micro small and medium scale enterprises, what is absolutely undeniably clear to us is that the future of Africa has been more and more defined by the freedom of inclusion, the abundance of opportunities and the ladder to prosperity, which digital economy provides," he added.

The theme for the event was “Scaling Up Interoperability: Using Mobile Money to Buy and Sell Across Africa."