Re-denomination Wins Award

The Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Cedi Re-denomination websites have jointly won the 2007 World Summit Awards Special Mention from the continent of Africa for the best in e-content and creativity in the e-Government category. This is the first time Ghana has participated in the competition since the World Summit Awards started in 2003 as an initiative from Austria in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society. Following a selection of winners, an international conference was organized in Venice, Italy during which the winners from all over the world presented their awarded projects and shared their visions on the topic of “ICT & Creativity”. At the 2007 conference, Derrick-Hope Gidzi, Chief Executive Officer and George Kofi Hagan, Chief Technology Officer of Con-Imedia, designers of the Bank of Ghana and Ghana Cedi Re-denomination websites, received the award for the World Summit Awards Special Mention for the best in e-government in Africa and made a presentation on the Bank of Ghana and the Ghana Cedi Re-denomination websites. The winners were selected following an evaluation by the World Summit Award Grand Jury 2007, which consisted of eminent multimedia and e-content experts from 32 countries. The categories for the awards were e-Culture, e-Government, e-Health, e-Learning, e-Business, e-Entertainment, e-Science and e-Inclusion. It would be recalled that the Bank of Ghana developed a website on the re-denomination exercise which was launched in April 2007. The Cedi Re-denomination website, which had a link from a re-designed Bank of Ghana website, had the various features including currency converters for converting the cedi to the Ghana Cedi and vice versa and also converting the cedi or Ghana Cedi to foreign currencies and vice versa. The World Summit Awards (WSA) is the world’s premier contest for excellence in e-content and creativity. They honour producers of interactive multimedia and innovative ICT applications and are the only awards supported by a public-private partnership between professional organizations, industry, governments and UN organizations.