Ghana Discussing Possibilities Of Digital Currency, E-cedi

Ghana’s central bank has declared an interest in the creation of a digital currency, noting that it was in the “advanced stages”.

This was disclosed by the Bank of Ghana’s Governor, Ernest Addison, stating that currency would go by ‘e-cedi’.

Addison also noted that following its creation, it would be distilled through three phases, before it is introduced for national use.

The governor said, “The Bank of Ghana was one of the first African Central Banks to declare that we were working on a digital currency looking at the concept of an e-cedi,” according to a local news media, Graphic.

He added, “Yes, we are quite advanced in that process. As you know, with these types of things, you have to go at it in phases and the first phase was really on the design of the electronic money and the team that has gone quite far in the design phase, they are looking at the implementation phase.

“After the implementation phase, we have a pilot phase where a few people would be able to use the digital cedi on the mobile applications and other applications that are currently running.

“From that pilot, we will be able to determine whether this is feasible and what sort of things need to be tweaked to make it work effectively.”

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Less Volatility With State-Backed E-cedi

Remarking on the volatility of the currency, as is the case with popular digital currencies out of the jurisdictions of state regulators, Addison said that the e-cedi was necessary because coins like “Bitcoin” were currencies with unstable values.

He said, “You have seen the sharp changes in the valuations of some of these coins, the Bitcoin large, large swings in the value of the currency. The basic function of currency is for them to be used effectively as a medium of exchange or even as a unit of account, so when you have a currency whose value is so unstable, you really cannot use it effectively to meet any of the standard functions of money.

“This is why, I think there is a lot more emphasis on looking at digital money which is backed by the state, backed by the central banks. These private forms of money really are not able to perform the functions of money effectively”.

Recently, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) implied an unveiling of a digital currency in Nigeria, stating, “We are committed in the CBN and I can assure everybody that digital currency will come to life even in Nigeria.”