⚠️ HRF CBDC ⛓️🪙 alert from HRF for Ghana (27-FEB-2024)

🗝️ℹ️ (Key Information)

CBDC Status: Pilot

CBDC Launch: n/a

CBDC Model: n/a

CBDC Issued: n/a

Inflation Rate: 31.26%

One-Sentence Summary:

Despite economic issues and civil liberties concerns, Ghana's central bank continues to work towards the imminent launch of its Central Bank Digital Currency (#CBDC), the E-cedi.

✅ GHANA's central bank eyes the CBDC (E-cedi) launch, but it is hampered by economic instability and the launch timeline remains undefined.

✅ Vice President of Ghana, Mahamudu Bawumia advocates for a shift to digital currencies for trade enhancement despite economic instability, while Africa needs CBDCs, not cryptocurrency according to Bawumia.

✅ The CBDC launch, initially scheduled for 2022 was delayed due to high inflation, requiring a refocus on macro environment and dealing with inflation, according to the bank governor, Ernest Addison.

✅ Despite delay, the Bank of Ghana published a report detailing motivations and design principles for the Ghanaian CBDC, aimed at addressing cryptocurrency rise, digitizing the economy, and enhancing financial inclusion.

✅ By 2023, the bank completed its pilot and considered the CBDC launch despite ongoing economic instability.

✅ 2024 sees new CBDC launch plan revealed by Vice President Bawumia, highlighting the potential for CBDC as a tool to battle corruption, enhance transparency, taxation, and prevent money laundering.

✅ However, civil liberty concerns arise as GHANA has seen governmental attempts to silence freedom of expression and significant corruption and a CBDC could potentially amplify these challenges.

✅ The risk of a CBDC catalyzing attacks on journalists by government officials and undermining opposition by allowing for freezing and seizure of finances poses a major concern.

✅ Corruption in Ghana, leading to over $346 million mishandled in 2022, calls the government's promises to mitigate surveillance, control and other risks of CBDCs into question.

#HumanRightsFoundation #CBDC #Ecedi #Ghana #DigitalCurrency #Finance #Corruption #EconomicInstability #CivilLiberties

Question:

What safeguards can we put in place to ensure that CBDCs, like Ghana's E-cedi, do not exacerbate human right abuses or deepen systemic corruption?

Disclaimer: This is an AI-generated summary of the original text from HRF, forigve fuck-ups plox. If you find it useful, ⚡ the Tracker Bot because the AI and Cloud bits are not free to run.

Source of data: https://cbdctracker.hrf.org/home (npub1zhqcda52mrvcc0vkwegwsp5xtpk6l6x5kqx85f06tu9lw5h6xx0scch0dw)

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