‘Nigeria needs unified identity system to deepen financial inclusion’

Lack of unified identity system has been identified as one of the major limitations confronting the financial inclusion drive in Nigeria.
  
The Managing Director/CEO Africa Operations, Inlaks, Femi Adeoti, who stated this, said 90 percent of the Kenya population has been included because the country has a unified identity system.
   
Adeoti, who spoke at Nigeria ICT Impact CEO Forum, in Lagos, said the 36.6 million people who are excluded from basic financial services in Nigeria, showed that there is a major gap between demand and supply.

He equally listed financial literacy, policy, cost of technology solutions, lack of unified identity, and lack of agency networks as parts of the challenges dragging the growth of financial inclusion.
   
To him, increased economic growth, security, better productivity, reduction in income inequalities, increased employment, and poverty reduction are some of the benefits the country will witness as a result of financial inclusion strategy.
   
Speaking on, “Transformative Potential of the Digital Economy – Nigeria in the 21st Century,” President, Medallion Communications, Ike Nnamani, said the growing share of intangible components in the final value of goods, coupled with increasing ease of access to digital technologies, platforms, and advanced capital goods are radically transforming the understanding of production and distribution of wealth and cross-border trade.
  
Nnamani noted that there is a growing division in the global economy among those who use, develop, distribute, and manage digital technologies and set standards.
  
To arrest this situation, he said digital commoditisation and the fallacy of composition are critical aspects of the digital economy and have substantial implications for economic development and income distribution.

“The digital age is transforming everything: the nature of markets and products, how to produce, deliver and pay, the scale of capital to operate globally, and human capital requirements. The boost in productivity, which is exposing companies to new ideas, technologies, new management, and business models and creating new channels of market access, and all of these at relatively low costs. It is not an exaggeration to predict that firms will increasingly rely on artificial intelligence (AI) for basic routines and more complex tasks,” he stated.
   
According to him, for digital technologies to impact economic development, appropriate policies have to be in place to remove the obstacles that prevent emerging economies from fully engaging in the digital economy and optimising the benefits, while minimising the risks.