Digital Impact Awards Africa to promote Digital Innovations for Financial Inclusion
Kamplala, July 28, 2014: As part of its contribution to national economic growth efforts, Digital Impact Awards Africa (DIAA) will strongly promote digital innovations for financial inclusion. The theme for the inaugural awards event is “Maximizing the Digital Dividend with Digital Innovations for Financial Inclusion”. The inaugural DIAA in partnership with National Information and Technology Authority of Uganda (NITA-U), CyberPlc Limited and HiPipo (U) Limited will be held on Thursday 21st August at Sheraton Kampala Hotel.
DIAA aims to discover and promote innovations and best practices for web, mobile, social, cybersecurity and digital financial services. East Africa has seen innovation and deepening of digital financial services focused on financial inclusion. Professor Emmanuel Tumusiime-Mutebile, Governor, Bank of Uganda, recently at African Mobile Phone Financial Services Policy Initiative (AMPI) Leaders Roundtable pointed out that “Mobile financial services have been catalyzed by exponential growth.” The Awards would support efforts of the Bank of Uganda’s Digital Financial Inclusion Project by ensuring that financial institutions “take advantage of new technologies to increase access to financial services, while at the same time protecting consumers.”
During the International Financial Inclusion Summit held in July 2014 in Kigali, H.E Paul Kagame called for fast-tracking of the creation of tools and the appropriate use of technology to help expand access to modern financial services to enable the country’s citizens to effectively save their earnings and invest carefully. The project dividend will be shared across Africa such as in Rwanda where the National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) has spearheaded the financial inclusion agenda.
The awards categories covering financial services have nominees from Banking and Telecommunications sectors. The categories are Best Digital Financial Service and Best Digital Financial Service Innovation. Other awards categories such as Best E-Commerce, Best E-Service and Digital Brand of the Year are evaluated with a strong focus on how they deploy innovative digital payments.
Cybersecurity is a cross-cutting theme for the Awards because of the growing realisation that financial institutions and their supply chain are vulnerable to cyber attack. Cybersecurity is of interest to different financial inclusion stakeholders because insecure technology-based financial service delivery channels risk eroding customer confidence, imperil the financial inclusion agenda and thus reduce economic growth.
At the awards event we shall have a speech on the “Cybersecurity Challenges in the technology-based financial services.”
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