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Chad Chronister, Donald Trump’s pick to run the DEA, withdraws name from considerationTORONTO -- TORONTO (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump was joking when he suggested Canada become the 51st U.S. state during a dinner with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a Canadian minister who attended their recent dinner said Tuesday. Fox News reported that Trump made the comment in response to Trudeau raising concerns that Trump's threatened tariffs on Canada would damage Canada's economy. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, who attended the Friday dinner at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, said Trump's comments were in jest. “The president was telling jokes. The president was teasing us. It was, of course, on that issue, in no way a serious comment,” LeBlanc told reporters in Ottawa. LeBlanc described it as a three-hour social evening at the president’s residence in Florida on a long weekend of American Thanksgiving. “The conversation was going to be light-hearted,” he said. He called the relations warm and cordial and said the fact that “the president is able to joke like that for us” indicates good relations. On Tuesday, Trump appeared to continue with the joke, posting on his Truth Social platform an AI-generated image of himself standing on a mountain with a Canadian flag next to him with the caption “Oh Canada!" Some Canadians had fun with it. “If I were President Trump, I’d think twice before invading Canada. The last time the U.S. tried something like that— back in the War of 1812 —it didn’t exactly end well. Canada even burned down the White House,” former Quebec Premier Jean Charest joked on X. Earlier last week, the Republican president-elect threatened to impose a 25% tax on all products entering the U.S. from Canada and Mexico unless they stem the flow of migrants and drugs. Trudeau requested the meeting in a bid to avoid the tariffs by convincing Trump that the northern border is nothing like the U.S. southern border with Mexico . Trudeau held a rare meeting with opposition leaders on Tuesday about U.S-Canada relations and later said that opposition Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre shouldn’t amplify the erroneous narratives that Americans are saying about the border. “Less than one percent of migrants coming into the United States irregularly come from Canada and 0.2 percent of the fentanyl coming into the United States comes from Canada,” Trudeau said in Parliament. Canadian officials have said there are plans to put more helicopters, drones and law enforcement officers at the border. At the dinner, Kristen Hillman, Canada's ambassador to the U.S., said America’s trade deficit with Canada was also raised. Hillman said the U.S. had a $75 billion trade deficit with Canada last year but noted a third of what Canada sells into the U.S. is energy exports and prices have been high. “Trade balances are something that he focuses on so it’s important to engage in that conversation but to put it into context,” Hillman told The Associated Press. “We are one-tenth the size of the United States so a balanced trade deal would mean per capita we are buying 10 times more from the U.S. than they are buying from us. If that’s his metric we will certainly engage on that.” Hillman said Canada sold $170 billion worth of energy products last year to the U.S. About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada, and 85% of U.S. electricity imports as well. Canada is also the largest foreign supplier of steel, aluminum and uranium to the U.S. and has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing for national security. About 77% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S. Trudeau's government successfully employed a “Team Canada” approach during Trump’s first term in office when the free trade deal between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico was renegotiated. But Trudeau’s minority government is in a much weaker position politically now and faces an election within a year. Poilievre, Canada's opposition leader, said the tariffs would harm Americans. “The president-elect was elected on a promise to make America richer. These tariffs would make America poorer,” Poilievre said after meeting with Trudeau. Poilievre said the U.S. would be wise to do more free trade with its best friend and closest ally. Canada is the top export destination for 36 U.S. states. Nearly 3.6 billion Canadian dollars ($2.7 billion) worth of goods and services cross the border each day. Trudeau returned home after the dinner at Mar-a-Lago club in Florida without assurances Trump would back away from threatened tariffs on all products from the major American trading partner. Trump called the talks “productive” but signaled no retreat from a pledge that Canada says unfairly lumps it in with Mexico over the flow of drugs and migrants into the United States. The flows of migrants and seizures of drugs are vastly different. U.S. customs agents seized 43 pounds of fentanyl at the Canadian border during the last fiscal year, compared with 21,100 pounds at the Mexican border. Most of the fentanyl reaching the U.S. — where it causes about 70,000 overdose deaths annually — is made by Mexican drug cartels using precursor chemicals smuggled from Asia. On immigration, the U.S. Border Patrol reported 1.53 million encounters with irregular migrants at the southwest border with Mexico between October 2023 and September 2024. That compares to 23,721 encounters at the Canadian border during that time.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are bringing Trump's DOGE to Capitol Hill( MENAFN - GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP Securities Litigation Partner James (Josh) Wilson Encourages Investors Who Suffered Losses Exceeding $50,000 In Match To Contact Him Directly To Discuss Their Options If you suffered losses exceeding $50,000 in Match between May 2, 2023 and November 6, 2024 and would like to discuss your legal rights, call Faruqi & Faruqi partner Josh Wilson directly at 877-247-4292 or 212-983-9330 (Ext. 1310) . [You may also click here for additional information] NEW YORK, Dec. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP , a leading national securities law firm, is investigating potential claims against Match Group, Inc. (“Match” or the“Company”) (NASDAQ: MTCH) and reminds investors of the January 24, 2025 deadline to seek the role of lead plaintiff in a federal securities class action that has been filed against the Company. Faruqi & Faruqi is a leading national securities law firm with offices in New York, Pennsylvania, California and Georgia. The firm has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors since its founding in 1995. See . As detailed below, the complaint alleges that the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws by making false and/or misleading statements and/or failing to disclose that: (1) Match Group materially understated the challenges affecting Tinder and, as a result, understated the risk that Tinder's monthly active user count would not recover by the time the Company reported its financial results for the third quarter of 2024; and (2) as a result, defendants' statements about Match Group's business, operations, and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. On November 7, 2024, Investopedia published an article entitled“Match Group Stock Slips as Fourth Quarter Outlook Disappoints.” This article said that“[s]hares of online dating giant Match Group tumbled Thursday morning despite a third-quarter earnings beat released after the bell Wednesday. [. . .] Match said Tinder Direct revenue came in below its own expectations, as the app's monthly active users (MAUs) declined 9% from the same time last year and its revenue per payer (RPP) grew less than expected. Some new features tested with Tinder users in the quarter negatively impacted subscription revenue, which the company said will likely also have an impact on fourth quarter revenue.” On this news, the price of Match Group stock fell by 17.8% to close at $31.11 per share on November 7, 2024. The court-appointed lead plaintiff is the investor with the largest financial interest in the relief sought by the class who is adequate and typical of class members who directs and oversees the litigation on behalf of the putative class. Any member of the putative class may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision to serve as a lead plaintiff or not. Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP also encourages anyone with information regarding Match's conduct to contact the firm, including whistleblowers, former employees, shareholders and others. To learn more about the Match class action, go to /MTCH or call Faruqi & Faruqi partner Josh Wilson directly at 877-247-4292 or 212-983-9330 (Ext. 1310) . Follow us for updates on LinkedIn , on X , or on Facebook . Attorney Advertising. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP ( ). Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your particular case. All communications will be treated in a confidential manner. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at MENAFN26122024004107003653ID1109033426 Legal Disclaimer: MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers urged a judge again Friday to throw out his hush money conviction, balking at the prosecution’s suggestion of preserving the verdict by treating the case the way some courts do when a defendant dies. They called the idea “absurd.” The Manhattan district attorney's office is asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to “pretend as if one of the assassination attempts against President Trump had been successful,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a blistering 23-page response. In court papers made public Tuesday, District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books after Trump’s lawyers filed paperwork earlier this month asking for the case to be dismissed. They include freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029, agreeing that any future sentence won't include jail time, or closing the case by noting he was convicted but that he wasn't sentenced and his appeal wasn’t resolved because of presidential immunity. Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove reiterated Friday their position that the only acceptable option is overturning his conviction and dismissing his indictment, writing that anything less will interfere with the transition process and his ability to lead the country. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined comment. It’s unclear how soon Merchan will decide. He could grant Trump’s request for dismissal, go with one of the prosecution’s suggestions, wait until a federal appeals court rules on Trump’s parallel effort to get the case moved out of state court, or choose some other option. In their response Friday, Blanche and Bove ripped each of the prosecution’s suggestions. Halting the case until Trump leaves office would force the incoming president to govern while facing the “ongoing threat” that he’ll be sentenced to imprisonment, fines or other punishment as soon as his term ends, Blanche and Bove wrote. Trump, a Republican, takes office Jan. 20. “To be clear, President Trump will never deviate from the public interest in response to these thuggish tactics,” the defense lawyers wrote. “However, the threat itself is unconstitutional.” The prosecution’s suggestion that Merchan could mitigate those concerns by promising not to sentence Trump to jail time on presidential immunity grounds is also a non-starter, Blanche and Bove wrote. The immunity statute requires dropping the case, not merely limiting sentencing options, they argued. Blanche and Bove, both of whom Trump has tabbed for high-ranking Justice Department positions, expressed outrage at the prosecution’s novel suggestion that Merchan borrow from Alabama and other states and treat the case as if Trump had died. Blanche and Bove accused prosecutors of ignoring New York precedent and attempting to “fabricate” a solution “based on an extremely troubling and irresponsible analogy between President Trump" who survived assassination attempts in Pennsylvania in July and Florida in September “and a hypothetical dead defendant.” Such an option normally comes into play when a defendant dies after being convicted but before appeals are exhausted. It is unclear whether it is viable under New York law, but prosecutors suggested that Merchan could innovate in what’s already a unique case. “This remedy would prevent defendant from being burdened during his presidency by an ongoing criminal proceeding,” prosecutors wrote in their filing this week. But at the same time, it wouldn’t “precipitously discard” the “meaningful fact that defendant was indicted and found guilty by a jury of his peers.” Prosecutors acknowledged that “presidential immunity requires accommodation” during Trump’s impending return to the White House but argued that his election to a second term should not upend the jury’s verdict, which came when he was out of office. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution . Other world leaders don’t enjoy the same protection. For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial on corruption charges even as he leads that nation’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza . Trump has been fighting for months to reverse his May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records . Prosecutors said he fudged the documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier, which Trump denies. In their filing Friday, Trump’s lawyers citing a social media post in which Sen. John Fetterman used profane language to criticize Trump’s hush money prosecution. The Pennsylvania Democrat suggested that Trump deserved a pardon, comparing his case to that of President Joe Biden’s pardoned son Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of tax and gun charges . “Weaponizing the judiciary for blatant, partisan gain diminishes the collective faith in our institutions and sows further division,” Fetterman wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. Trump’s hush money conviction was in state court, meaning a presidential pardon — issued by Biden or himself when he takes office — would not apply to the case. Presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes. Since the election, special counsel Jack Smith has ended his two federal cases , which pertained to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegations that he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A separate state election interference case in Fulton County, Georgia, is largely on hold. Trump denies wrongdoing in all. Trump had been scheduled for sentencing in the hush money case in late November. But following Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed the former and future president’s sentencing so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case. Merchan also delayed a decision on Trump’s prior bid to dismiss the case on immunity grounds. A dismissal would erase Trump’s conviction, sparing him the cloud of a criminal record and possible prison sentence. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.Is it safe to eat turkey this Thanksgiving amid bird flu outbreak? Here’s what experts say
NoneBrazilian police formally accuse former President Bolsonaro and aides of alleged 2022 coup attempt
2025 Porsche Macan price and specscoach Nick Sirianni apologized for tight end for comments that led to an on-field spat between the two following their Week 16 matchup. Sirianni reportedly took issue with how enthusiastically Ertz high-fived him following and remarked how little impact the tight end had in the game. Ertz caught one pass (on two targets) for 12 yards in the win. Upon hearing the comment, Ertz confronted Sirianni and the two had to be separated by Eagles head of security Dom DiSandro. (You may remember DiSandro for last season with linebacker . The NFL for the following game.) On the latest episode of unCovering the Birds, dives into the reason for the postgame confrontation between head coach Nick Sirianni and former Eagles tight end Zach Ertz. More details: — Philadelphia Inquirer Sports (@phillysport) The coach later called his former player (Ertz was with the Eagles from 2013-21, playing his final season under Sirianni) and apologized, . When asked what was said, Sirianni kept the remarks to himself. "I'll just keep all of my conversations with any guys private," Sirianni told reporters on Thursday, . "I've got a lot of respect for Zach. Great football player, great person to be around. I really got a lot of respect for Zach and all the good things that he's done and my relationship with him." Sirianni was obviously upset over losing a close game to Washington, one which likely cost them an opportunity to earn the top seed in the NFC and ended a 10-game winning streak. However, his antagonistic behavior and composure on the sideline and after games has . CJ Gardner Johnson extended his fingers to the fans as he was ejected from the game — John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) The coach may also have been irritated at the Eagles' composure during the game, with the team committing 10 penalties and defensive back getting ejected, after which he flipped off the Commanders fans at Northwest Stadium. Philadelphia hosts the on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET, while Washington plays the at 8:20 p.m. ET. If the current standings hold, the Eagles and Commanders would face each other in the opening round of the playoffs.
NexGel CEO Adam Levy acquires $9,999 in stock
Chad Chronister, Donald Trump’s pick to run the DEA, withdraws name from considerationis increasingly being considered one of the major drivers of digital transformation in Africa and other parts of the world. This is partly because it has the power to change lives and communities, allowing them the opportunity to access different services and contribute to the growth of their economies. There is thus no gainsaying the importance of tools like digital identity that enable financial inclusion to the overall digital transformation agenda of many African countries, including those of the Central Africa subregion, grouped under the umbrella of the Central Africa Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC). These countries include Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon and have a combined population of more than 60 million people. The region has an ambitious plan to achieve a 75 percent financial inclusion rate by 2030 through an initiative by the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) to ensure the establishment of across the six countries in the next five years. The mid-term plan is to have 350,000 such payment points by 2027. It’s worthy of note that this part of the continent faces considerable economic inequalities that seriously threaten the realisation of this ambition. ID4Africa Executive Chairman, Dr. Joseph Atick, and Cameroonian tech startup consultant, Ayuk Etta, share their expert views on how the CEMAC subregion can lay the foundation for a stronger financial inclusion push in order to advance economic growth and development. CEMAC is considered the least developed and least tech-driven subregion in Africa, despite its huge economic growth potential and strategic geographical location of its member states. A large segment of the population here remains either unbanked or underbanked, which hinders both development and economic freedom especially among vulnerable groups of persons such as women and adults with lower-incomes. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank’s , the number of adults in this region who are unbanked is below the global average. It is the same case with Cameroon which is considered the region’s biggest economy, as well as all the other five countries. In the Republic of Congo, just around 18 percent of adults were said to have a formal relation with banking institutions as of 2021. The situation is in the Central African Republic where less that 15 percent of the population is said to have a bank account, while just around 14 percent of adults are able to participate in any form of financial transaction such as mobile money services. At least 74 percent of women across the subregion are estimated to be financially excluded. In its , BEAC noted that the overall rate of financial inclusion in the subregion stood at 32 percent as of that year. What this means, experts say, is that innovative tech solutions as well as the right digital infrastructure and policies could possibly offer a window to effectively address major loopholes in financial accessibility in the region. The low level of financial inclusion within CEMAC, just like in other regions of Africa, is blamed on a litany of factors which include a paucity of digital public infrastructure, high cost, a weak and unaligned regulatory environment, and other socio-economic factors such as a high rate of poverty among countries of the subregion. To enable wider participation in the financial ecosystem of CEMAC, it is vital to consider changes to a number of things, including enhancing efforts in financial literacy. It also requires starting from the basics such as building the appropriate digital public infrastructure (DPI), says digital ID expert and Executive Chairman, Dr Joseph Atick. “I think the very first thing, of course, is getting people into the national population registers. If they are not registered, then there is nothing you can do to enable them to participate. It is clear from the standards and best practices within the financial sector that identity is a pillar upon which you have to build financial services,” he tells in an interview. “You cannot do anonymous if you are to protect the financial ecosystem from being hijacked from fraud, from criminal activity, from money laundering, from the criminal networks that will exploit it. You must have a reliable, robust identity system that has maximum coverage of the population. That is the prerequisite for financial inclusion. You can’t talk about financial inclusion without talking about identity.” Further stressing the place of digital identity in financial inclusion, Atick avers: “Financial inclusion is highly correlated and related to digital identity. And our statistics show that the penetration of digital identity is very low in the Central Africa region, which is actually among the regions that are hardest hit by certain economic conditions. This can have a corresponding [negative] impact on financial inclusion. I expect that financial inclusion has a long way to go in many areas in Africa.” , a Cameroonian tech startup architect agrees with Atick on the need for robust digital infrastructure such as digital identity, which for now, is almost entirely inexistent in CEMAC countries. At the moment, only a national digital ID system as part of its DPI journey. “To do this, I think it’s important to implement strategies, set up the right infrastructures, get the appropriate policies and innovative methods to be able to push the agenda of financial inclusion,” Etta notes. “I believe the infrastructure needs to be extended to be able to get to those people down there. That would also mean building more digital infrastructure generally speaking, like digital identity systems. We understand this is an important aspect of driving financial inclusion. We also need interoperable data exchange platforms.” “If we don’t build this infrastructure, which I believe is the driving force of digital transformation, we will not go far. It will always be at a level where we are trying, or not getting it done. If digital identity is not properly implemented, there are many things that cannot happen. Financial inclusion is also about how people access loans easily. If you cannot properly identify somebody digitally, for instance, you cannot give them a digital loan,” Etta, who’s also CEO of , a tech and innovation company in Cameroon, argues. Beyond the infrastructure, financial inclusion would see a leap forward in CEMAC if the right policies and platforms exist. “The number two thing is that you have to have the right policies in place which are going to establish what would constitute acceptable identity authentication for identity transactions. So, be it for onboarding or identity transactions, you have to have a policy. Saying that we’re going to do biometric authentication for every transaction, no matter what value it is and what context it is, doesn’t make any sense,” Atick holds. “You have to have a policy that is basically a risk-based policy. And we have lots of experience in that. Some countries started with their own policies, and over time, they started to understand it. Luckily, there is a lot of knowledge now that we can share on this point. This is why we’re doing the Financial Inclusion Symposium at the ID4Africa Annual General Meeting next year [ ], because these countries are going to share their knowledge and experiences.” “The symposium at the AGM will basically be on digital identity and finance. It’s going to focus on the stages of financial inclusion, and what are the risk-based policies countries must put in place to achieve the desired outcome, which is a low-cost, high-robustness and trustworthy ecosystem that enables anybody to enter the system and to conduct transactions securely.” Talking about another important aspect, which is having the financial platform, Atick explains: “Even if people are known to you in the Civil Register or the National Population Register; if you do not have the financial platforms and access to these financial platforms, then you cannot participate. So, you need a mobile phone, for instance. Digital identities are now issuing credentials which have QR codes.” “It could be a mobile phone, either smart, which is a problem in many countries, or a feature phone. But apart from that, you should also be able to give people paper-based IDs with digital seals that are able to link the physical world to the digital world upon which the financial ecosystem runs. You have to make sure that there is a financially suitable credential, and that’s easily presentable so that people can use it and can link to it.” To Atick, the other important thing to do is to encourage the people to accept and use the issued identity credential for the purpose of payment. “We have several countries which have now achieved total coverage of the population for their ID program but there is still limited use of the ID in the financial sector. Therefore, I would not say that they are financially included because people got IDs. It’s like I have a bank account, but I cannot use it. Don’t mistake that for financial inclusion. Financial inclusion has to be real, practical, accessible,” Atick insists. While countries in the CEMAC region and the continent at large look to build their infrastructure to propel financial inclusion, they must have issues like fraud and scale in mind. They must build systems that are scalable and have strong security measures around them to prevent financial fraud and other forms of criminal intrusion. “There are countries that are scaling up their systems so that everyone can use them, but these countries are struggling with fraud which is at all levels of society. We have seen even in the developed world where financially included people are targeted. Fraudsters use social engineering by targeting the weakest link in the digital chain which is the human.” “Financial inclusion is a very, very complex ecosystem. It’s not just about giving excluded people or the poor access to bank accounts. It is about enabling a robust and highly fraud-resistant ecosystem that allows transactions for service delivery.” As part of the push, fintechs, mobile money services, and other instant payment systems are also playing a major role in opening up the financial space for millions of citizens of the subregion, even if such instant payment infrastructures are limited and not inclusive. According to a SIIPS report , the CEMAC subregion has the lowest number of live and operating instant payment systems (IPS). Although it has one regional IPS dubbed , the efforts remain slow and the system has its limitations as it is linked to a bank card, meaning you must have a bank account to be able to use the service. In a report on financial services within CEMAC in 2022, BEAC said just two percent of all transactions involved traditional bank transfers or cards. In the subregion, there are two major multinational companies, namely MTN and Orange, which offer mobile money banking services. There are many other existing and emerging fintech startups which also facilitate instant payments in the form of mobile money. “The instant payment system is one of the use cases of digital ID that allows the financial identifier to be useful and meaningful. So yes, instant payment is very, very important. But let’s not get hung up on terms: whether it’s digital public infrastructure or not, countries don’t think that way. Countries think of problems and what the practical solutions are. They think of how to deploy the necessary tools and infrastructure,” Atick opines. He notes that for the case of Africa, instant payment services like mobile money helped the continent leapfrog the rest of the world in the last 20 years, despite the interoperability issues the service has suffered. BEAC reported in 2022 that over 96 percent of all transactions within CEMAC that year were completed through mobile money channels. “For many, many years, mobile money was just not interoperable, but it’s still heavily used in East Africa. But I think the time has come for a general interoperable instant money similar to mobile money that used to be there, and that actually connects you to the bank account, so that you have a whole list of services, not just holding your money in a mobile credit with a telephone company,” Atick suggests. “While mobile money was very practical and pragmatic and useful for people as one of the alternative mechanisms that was used to bypass this question of people being bankable or people entering the banking system, it has not led to the reform that we had hoped for, which is that you create an ecosystem with many financial services available to an individual with a bank account that they can use and control with their own consent and with their own mechanisms.” Etta concurs with Atick’s view about having a general interoperable instant payment system similar to mobile money, but notes that innovation is what is likely to play the magic. He also believes there’s need to create the enabling regulatory and policy environment for innovative ventures to germinate and thrive. “Innovation is at the center of this transformation. It’s not going to happen if we don’t adopt innovation. Innovation is simply a new way of doing things or better ways of doing things and solving the problems that we face in a country or in a region like CEMAC. A lot of new technology is coming. Today, there’s generative artificial intelligence. To encourage innovation, the most important thing is to create the right environment,” he holds. “This subregion, like the rest of Africa, has a youthful population and these are people who can drive innovation. One thing that has to be done is to create the right framework. In Cameroon, as an example, we have started a Hackathon which is something that brings together young people to build tech solutions to specific societal problems. That’s our own way of trying to push the spirit of innovation. If that gets done multiple times, I think that there’s a lot that can happen in terms of designing new solutions.” In terms of fintechs development and their contribution to financial inclusion, Etta says Cameroon is on the right path with some industry-led initiatives. “In Cameroon today, there’s a lot that’s being done in terms of fintech development and how the ecosystem is evolving. One major milestone that we have achieved today is the creation of a fintech alliance called the Cameroon Fintech Association, and that is led by some of the really big fintechs in Cameroon,” he says. “One of the things we are doing is having a discussion on how the governments or the Central Bank of the subregion can better understand what fintechs are, what they are doing, and what the different avenues of collaboration are, because we really think it’s important to have a vital and strong fintech ecosystem to push financial inclusion.” Although the current realities reflect a not-to-good image and a long path still to be covered, there is some hope that things will improve, provided countries fully understand where exactly to hit the nail and act accordingly, going forward. “It’s not a technical problem, the infrastructure that is needed for that is known. It’s a matter of policy. And it’s also a matter of motivation. We should ask ourselves what the barriers are that we are trying to remove to advance financial inclusion,” Atick says. “I think the level of awareness is accelerating very, very quickly, and that is good news because awareness means informed policies and informed policies will lead to products and solutions that will be accessible by the populations. And when there’s a feedback cycle, the population adopts. A good policy will reinforce the sustainability of these systems.” Atick adds that the future is bright: “Africa will get a sustainable financial inclusion system because all of the economies that are being built in Africa, whether it’s regional or whether it is continental, all rely on one critical assumption. If that assumption fails, then all these, such as the intercontinental free trade agreement, are going to fail.” “Financial inclusion is not just about allowing the poor to get access to financial services. Financial inclusion is about allowing everybody to participate in a usable digital economy,” Atick mentions. To Etta, this is possible in an atmosphere in which governments stay alert and move along with the changing realities of technology. “Another thing is for the governments to be proactive. I don’t think governments should design policies that stay ten years before they are reviewed, because technology is going so fast. And because technology is going so fast, our policies also need to go so fast, to catch up with the growth of technological solutions.” One such new technologies is generative AI, which Etta strongly believes, is useful to drive financial inclusion and digital transformation, generally speaking. “AI is a super powerful tool that we have to make use of to be able to accelerate some of the decisions and projects we want to execute. We just need to understand how it works and how to use it. But more importantly, how to adapt it to our local context in order to get things better done. “So, I will say three things here: one, we need to understand the power of AI. Two, we need to understand that AI is a tool that we can use to accelerate progress and three, we need to adapt it to our context to understand what some of our nuances are.” “I will add that we also need to have really strong AI policies. At one point, AI is really great, and at the other, AI could be very dangerous. So, we need to have policies that guide its implementation and use, but also those policies should not stifle innovation.” | | | | | | | | |Is Enron back? If it's a joke, some former employees aren't laughing