⚠️ 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:
Economic instability and concerns over human rights abuses delay Ghana's Central Bank Digital Currency deployment.
✅ 🇬🇭 is amidst its ongoing CBDC development with the Bank of Ghana at the helm, but has hit a roadblock due to economic fluctuations, causing the schedule for the e-Cedi launch to remain uncertain.
CBDC History and Development:
✅ In 2021, Ghana's Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia, advocated for Africa to adopt digital currencies for trade facilitation, however, emphasizing the need for CBDCs instead of cryptocurrencies.
✅ Backed by technical aid from Giesecke+Devrient, the Bank of Ghana began piloting a retail CBDC.
✅ In 2022, the roll-out of Ghana's CBDC was deferred due to high inflation rates. The central bank shifted its attention towards stabilizing macroeconomic fluctuations.
✅ Concurrently, the Bank of Ghana disclosed its motives for a national CBDC, encompassing digitizing the economy, promoting financial inclusion, countering the rise of cryptocurrencies, and proactively setting regulatory alignments.
✅ Reports from 2023 suggested that the Bank of Ghana had completed its CBDC pilot despite further delays due to economic instability.
✅ 2024 headlines share the news of the Vice President revealing new schemes about CBDC aimed at combatting corruption, enhancing transparency, improving tax collection, and hindering money laundering.
Human Rights and Civil Liberties Concerns:
✅Despite Ghana's reasonably high score in Freedom House’s 2023 Freedom in the World report, the country faces ongoing challenges regarding freedom of speech and corruption.
✅ The adoption of a CBDC in a climate of civil liberty restrictions, attacks on journalists, and corruption could worsen these issues by giving more control to the government.
✅ If implemented, a CBDC could allow the government to seize financial activities of critical journalists, activists, and political dissenters, thereby curtailing their civil power.
✅ Corruption, another major problem in Ghana, may influence the operational policy of a CBDC system, potentially leading to misuse and infraction of rights.
#Ghana #CBDC #EconomicInstability #HumanRights #FreedomHouse #BankOfGhana #ecedi
How do you think the adoption of a CBDC in a country with ongoing civil liberty issues like Ghana could influence the balance of power and individual freedoms?
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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