In line with the Central Bank of Egypt’s (CBE) steadfast efforts to strengthen collaboration with fellow African central banks, the CBE hosted two delegations from the Bank of Ghana. The first delegation aimed to gain insights into Egypt’s experience in digital transformation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), advanced analytics, data governance, and the development of financial services, while the second delegation focused on leveraging Egypt’s pioneering expertise in cybersecurity.

The first delegation’s visit continued for several days, during which members were introduced to the CBE’s experience in building an integrated data management system, including data governance, Supervisory and Regulatory Technology applications (SupTech and RegTech), as well as the use of AI to support monetary policy, inflation forecasting, and labor market indicators. Moreover, the visit covered the CBE’s efforts to upgrade supervisory and oversight mechanisms, data collection and analysis processes, and the use of AI Chatbots, reflecting the CBE’s direction towards adopting modern technologies to support its operations and enhance performance efficiency.

The visit included a presentation on the CBE’s Digital Transformation Strategy, Egypt’s experience in developing the digital payments ecosystem, and the efforts to support the transition towards a less-cash society through advancing the national payments infrastructure, strengthening regulatory and legislative frameworks, and launching and developing digital payment systems and services.

This was followed by a review of the CBE’s key strategic initiatives, most notably the Instant Payment Network (IPN) and the InstaPay application, Tokenization technologies that support secure digital payments, and the Digital Financial Identity (eKYC) system, which enables electronic customer identification and verification.

In a related context, the two-day visit of the second Ghanaian delegation focused on learning from the CBE’s leading experience in cybersecurity. This marked the delegation’s second visit, during which discussions were centered on the operational framework of the Computing Incident Response Team for the Financial Sector (EG-FinCIRT). Supporting secure financial innovation, the visit also covered the governance of digital financial services and reviewed the mechanisms and frameworks for authorizing FinTech applications and modern technological solutions prior to their launch in the local market.

The discussions also focused on risk assessment methodologies and the evaluation of cyber resilience through the CBE’s “Egyptian Financial Cybersecurity Framework (EG-FinCSF)”, whose enhanced second version is currently being prepared for launch. This updated version is designed to keep pace with the rapidly evolving global cyber landscape and introduce more flexible and precise supervisory and assessment tools to strengthen the protection of banks and financial institutions.

The visits of both Ghanaian delegations align with the CBE's commitment to fostering technical cooperation and capacity-building with African central banks, thereby enhancing financial and banking integration across Africa.