A Sit Down With Daryl Bhana, Vice President Of Commercial Sales And Strategy At GVG

Give a brief background of GVG and who they are.

Global Voice Group, founded in 1998 and present in 11 countries, is a global provider of ICT and RegTech solutions for governments and regulatory bodies.

GVG assists governments and authorities, through Big Data analytics, in their digital transformation and in the effective promotion of compliant and truly inclusive digital ecosystems.

The company monitors, collects, and analyses data from crucial economic sectors and turns it into actionable information. We promote data-driven decision-making.

Why should people within and without Africa be concerned with big data?

Data is among the most valuable commodities in today’s world since we are constantly collecting and utilizing it in our daily lives.

This, of course, is due to technology becoming an integral factor in nearly everything we do. But as the influence of technology grows, along with the data collection, we need to improve the efficiency of understanding what this data means for us. This is where big data analysis comes in.

Big data analysis uses technology to collect and aggregate all relevant data which can then be analyzed to assist in data-driven decision making. With the amount of data we are collecting growing exponentially, the need for big data analysis grows as well.

Africa is home to the five fastest-growing economies globally, according to IMF forecasts. That means that to continue spurring growth on the continent, data-driven decision-making must be at the fore. Big data analysis must therefore be considered by governments and regulators in Africa.

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How does GVG work with countries and organizations to tame/reduce revenue loss?

GVG works with regulators and governments to assist them with technological solutions that aid their work of oversight and compliance enforcement. Among these solutions are telecom and tax revenue assurance solutions that governments and regulators can employ.

With our assistance, we enable authorities to see in real-time the transactions that happen in the sector, such as in the telecom and mobile money industries, allowing them to effectively provide oversight. For example, we have been working with the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA) for over seven years.

Using our technology, we have assisted them in monitoring over 0.5 Billion transactions monthly, leading to the generation of more than USD 44 Million for the Rwandan government. They have also been able to increase annual revenue collection by 6% using digital technologies.

In the fight against Covid-19, how can big data help ministries of health in Kenya and East Africa combat the pandemic?

Big data analysis is central to data-driven decision-making and policy development. The fight against Covid-19 is one that depends on effective policy implementation by the ministries of health and other relevant agencies.

At the heart of combating the pandemic is the tracking of people, both the infected and their contacts, which is effectively mobility data. As GVG, we assisted the Ghanaian government in the analysis of mobility data to assist them in combating the virus.

This helped them to track the movements of citizens using data that is already being collected by telecom operators in the country so as to assess the effectiveness of any policies they chose to implement – such as curfews. Governments in East Africa can adopt a similar approach to ensure that their policies are having the desired impact.

Kenyan banks have been losing billions of shillings to fraudsters especially on mobile apps. Do they lack proper systems in place to help them deal with the menace? Does your organization have a way to help them out? Please expound.

As mentioned before, GVG works with governments and regulators, rather than directly with private companies. Our solutions are therefore used to aid the industry as a whole. In regards to revenue loss by banks, there are solutions available to them to help them strengthen their cybersecurity.

According to the ITU Global Cybersecurity Index 2018, Africa is the region with a lower number of countries that have implemented a cybersecurity strategy.

Moreover, only a third of them use metrics to measure cybersecurity. GVG’s SafetyNet Suite effectively address