The Ecobank Group through its Group CEO Ade Ayeyemi took part this Monday, June 22, 2020 in the Bloomberg Global Invest virtual conference that brings together the wolves of global finance from June 22 to 24, 2020 to gather their opinions "to face the market turbulence in the era of Covi-19".

DG Ayeyemi said that across Africa, important lessons from the Covid-19 situation have been learned.

According to him, when faced with a health crisis, it must first be solved "despite its impact on the economy". It is the health crisis that must first be solved. The head of the Pan-African bank evoking, the response of African countries to Covid-19, the boss of the pan-African bank, explained that "until then, we have been able to avoid the consequences and forecasts on the health crisis in Africa". "I think our leaders and our people understand significantly the need to avoid health crises," he said before adding that Africa must resolve the health crisis in order to arrive at a normalizing economic situation that avoids other forms of social crises.

"A great African president said: 'We know how to get an economy back up and running when it stops, but we don't know how to regain life once lost,'" he said in support of the measures enacted by governments on the continent.

He also considered that the health crisis has necessarily influenced the change of habits before revealing: "Covid-19 is accelerating the reality of a ''society without cash''.

According to the DG, there is the awareness that populations can not always move, just as it has been found that banknotes are vectors of transmission of the coronavirus.

In all African countries, the infrastructure put in place is used as a medium to allow people to get money. It is this label of example that "we have in our banks and we are witnessing a wide adoption of these new ways to receive and make payments".

Continuing, the DG affirmed that Covid-19 has become the great accelerator of our era; 90% of transactions were made digitally and 10% physically. During the Covid-19 situation, we went to 95% for digital and physical transactions 5%.

As we move forward, governments are proposing digital means as transparent. Populations adapt to them because they are affordable and above all guaranteed. "Physical tickets are becoming difficult to issue and I think Covid-19 has become the biggest accelerator of digital adoption," he said.

Ecobank Group sponsors the global virtual event Bloomberg Invest. Founded in Togo in 1985, the ECOBANK Group is present in 36 countries in West, Central and East Africa. It has 20,331 employees and 11 million customers.