Bank of Ghana (BoG) Governor Dr. Johnson Pandit Asiama has announced the creation of new specialised departments covering artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and virtual assets, as the central bank moves to close the gap between market innovation and its own regulatory capacity.
Dr. Asiama made the disclosure during a fireside chat on monetary governance, digital transformation, and financial stability at the ACI Financial Markets World Congress in Accra, where he outlined a series of institutional steps the BoG has taken to modernise oversight of Ghana’s evolving financial sector.
On virtual assets, Dr. Asiama said the central bank had observed growing activity around virtual assets and stablecoins but with limited regulatory visibility into what was happening. In response, the BoG established a dedicated department, passed a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) law, and introduced formal supervision of that space.
The Governor traced the BoG’s broader institutional evolution to 2016, when, serving as Deputy Governor, he raised the alarm about the central bank falling behind financial technology developments. “We are late. We are behind the markets,” he recalled telling the Governor at the time, a conversation that resulted in the creation of a dedicated Payment Systems Department.
That department subsequently gave rise to a Fintech Department, which Dr. Asiama said had contributed significantly to innovation within Ghana’s financial sector in the years since. The BoG is now considering a dedicated regulatory framework exclusively for fintech companies, designed to enable more specialised supervision and create room for the sector to develop in step with the broader industry.
He acknowledged that Ghana had initially lagged in the fintech space because the market moved faster than regulation, adding that the new departmental structures were intended to prevent a repeat of that pattern as AI and digital assets continue to reshape global finance.
Dr. Asiama noted that South Africa and Kenya were among the African countries pursuing similar regulatory modernisation strategies. He said the BoG was committed to building a consultative environment among regulators, innovators, and investors, believing that such engagement was essential to promoting financial sector innovation without undermining stability.
