Former President John Dramani Mahama has launched his campaign fund raising platform with a call on political parties to broaden their source of funding through technology powered by electronic crowdfunding platforms.

According to Mr Mahama, the state has been financing political parties in a way but with Ghana’s stance as a broke country, additional state financing cannot be a viable option on the table.

Instead, he suggested that political parties adopt new opportunities driven by technology and in particular, electronic crowdfunding platforms, as are being used in developed countries to raise revenues.

To this end, he said he has adopted a crowdfunding technology to promote a more transparent and accessible means to raise funds to execute his 2024 campaign.

Explaining further, Mr Mahama who is vying to become flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), said the use of reliable fintech payment systems will push this agenda to promote citizen participation in the financing of political parties’ activities.

“We did not have to go far in search of such a robust solution because Ghana has a lot of young talented fintech entrepreneurs who have invested so much within the digital ecosystem and have already created a lot of employment opportunities for several Ghanaians. These fintech entrepreneurs are successfully using their innovations to transform various sectors of the economy such as financial services, Agri-business, Health, Education and many more,” the former Ghanaian leader said in his address at a public lecture on political financing in Ghana and launch of JM 2024 fundraising platform at the UPSA in Accra on Wednesday, 22 March 2023.

As a former Minister for Communications, he said he is proud witnessing the evolution of the reforms he led in the 90s and the investments he made as President in Ghana’s technology and digital space.

Blowing his own horn, he made mention of constructing the Eastern corridor fiberoptic project, the 300-kilometre Accra- Tema metro fibre optic link, the 119 4G/LTE Base Stations constructed to provide high speed internet “not to forget the ultramodern edifices housing the Ministry of Communications, the National Data Centre, the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the Accra Digital Centre, all provided by the NDC administration.”

On the back of those achievements, he launched his digitalized retail donation campaign to mobilize small contributions from Ghanaians, both locally and in the diaspora.

The platform, he said, is transparent and has a dashboard screen that will show all inflows in real time. The dashboard is in turn linked to a collection bank account so that proceeds from all the channels can be received directly and used for the intended purpose.

Four channels are available for sending donations.

These include:

1. A John Mahama campaign mobile money number.

2. A USSD code.

3. An Official Zenith Bank account number; and

4. A John Mahama fundraising mobile App.

There will be a hotline one can call and access always to make enquiries. Donors can also email [email protected].

Mr Mahama encouraged everyone to donate freely and also emphasised that the retail donation platform is subject to the Crowdfunding Policy issued by the Bank of Ghana in February 2022. Therefore, the framework will be managed in line with a strict regulatory policy.