Fidelity Bank participates in IBM’s Leadership Forum

Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, who opened the meeting, articulated paradigm shifts happening in the world, which includes what she described as a “new era of computing upon which the world would operate that will bring in a new era of society.”

She detailed the new cognitive era of computing that is emerging and the ever increasing volume, velocity, variety and veracity of data.

The proliferation of mobile and social media is disrupting how people want to interact with businesses, and businesses must radically transform to seize the opportunity, Ginni said.

"The new era will be here. It will change society. It will make business compete on the basis of data. It will, therefore, change the way we live and work. And, we will reimagine our roles as leaders and the value that we can bring," Ginni added.

She described how these paradigm shifts were creating opportunities for transforming healthcare, energy, marketing and more, adding, for Africa, this means the opportunity to leapfrog how industries and professions operate in other parts of the world.

Mr Effah reinforced the opportunity that data presents by saying, "In very practical terms, data has transformed our business. Three years ago we got a report on the Ghana census and we were surprised to see that, contrary to what we thought, a lot of Ghanaians were living in places with different demographics, Qwith different levels of income. And that had a very big impact on how we rolled out our infrastructure to the different markets."

Dr James Mwangi, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Equity Bank and Chairman of Equity Group Foundation, also said that Africa had the opportunity to be the biggest beneficiary of those paradigm shifts, as it was not bound by legacy systems and could focus on building systems that leverage big data.

The forum is the first time that IBM's senior leadership team, comprising 17 senior leaders, including Chairman Ginni Rometty, have travelled together in Africa to meet with clients, partners and employees.