Why Oracle’s presence in Ghana is strategic

The country’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry recorded major history on its calendar when one of the world’s software giants, Oracle, opened a full-fledged office in Ghana last week.

Located in the latest toast of commercial properties in Ghana – the Stanbic Heights – Oracle proclaimed it was ready to serve its clients in Ghana better and offer consulting services to private and public sector entities in the country and across the sub-region.

The Country Manager for Oracle Ghana, Mr Joseph Asumang, said a corporate office in Ghana “demonstrates Oracle’s commitment to doing business here and supporting our customers and partners in West Africa.”

Buoyed by many fast-changing drivers within Ghana and the African region, Oracle’s arrival in Ghana comes with listless implications for the economy, human capital, the ICT industry, as well as the country’s image abroad.

To appreciate the company better, just think of a retail shop with tills (computerised cash desks), banking software and add-ons that operate the ATM, apps, online portals and databases and centres, telecommunications software to mobile applications and financial technology apps, aviation and maritime, customs clearing and what have you. All these systems, once computerised or digitised, rely on software and algorithms to boot. 

Most of these software rely on various Oracle software technology either as the end service or as a platform on which to further create applications. For example, Oracle's E-Business Suite (also known as Applications/Apps or EB-Suite/EBS) consists of a collection of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) computer applications either developed or acquired by Oracle.

The company has since 2004 invested US$39 billion in research and development; it recorded $38.2 billion in revenues last year as a global player.

Delving into the implications for various stakeholders of the company, Mr Asumang said the Ghana market would benefit from latest and innovative products of the company shortly after their release.

For instance, their entry into Ghana coincides with Africa’s growing adoption of cloud computing – using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.

“Our approach in Ghana aligns with Oracle’s global strategy: we are committed to helping organisations to transition to, and embrace the cloud; enabling them to transform their business with Oracle solutions. From data centre to cloud, Oracle helps eliminate the complexity that can stifle business innovation,” Mr Asumang stated.

It is part of Oracle’s own expansion drive in Africa, where the United States itself has declared business-ready for American companies. Over the last five years the United States has organised several trade missions across selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa at the behest of  US EXIM to explore avenues in power, energy, telecommunications, agriculture and agribusiness and what have you.

Booming ICT community

Ghana’s ICT industry has seen massive expansion over the last decade. Going back to when telecommunications was liberalised in the late 1990s, there has been the emergence of many enterprises. 

This cuts across the mobile telephony, software and hardware companies, ICT infrastructure providers to ICT innovators.

Ghana is the gateway to about five fibre optic submarine cables with many redundancies which provide reliable broadband services to support the ICT community. This infrastructure is key in the deployment of data centres and cloud computing among others.

With only using 4GLTE technology for data in the world, Ghana is one of the few countries which has widely adopted and deployed the technology. All six companies licensed to operate 4GLTE in the country have also been given deployment deadlines, including touching base with the rural folks.

The country also has many ICT software/hardware dealerships with various levels of partnerships with international giants. The local content in this area, however, leaves much to be desired.

Oracle’s presence can only strengthen ties with these dealers, providing them with avant-garde solutions in products and services. 

Regulatory space

The country also has one of the robust ICT regulatory regimes on the continent. The Ministry of Communications has under it many agencies and authorities which are working to regulate and secure the ICT environment.

Others also work to facilitate the growth of the sector, supporting it with some infrastructure and policy guidelines to stimulate growth and meet changes. 

Since global players such as Oracle are fast paced with trends and innovating ahead of the market, its presence in Ghana would help pull the regulatory and policy institutions along to also innovate either ahead of the market or meet current dynamism.

However, players in the ICT space have somewhat expressed concern over some regulatory and policy provisions which stifle rather than promote growth in the industry. 

Educational ecosystem

Interestingly, Oracle will also benefit from the country’s vast talents and skills in the ICT sector. With three public universities offering mainstream courses in ICT, coupled with a specialised training centre of excellence in ICT, Oracle has a large pool to further train and draw from.

There are also numerous private universities and institutions which train people to take internationally certified, including Oracle Certified, ICT courses.

The company has stressed that it will use local talents as much as possible to man its Ghana office and even deploying some Ghanaians within the Oracle global business.  

The Oracle Academy has already trained more than 45 educators from nine universities in database design and programming and Java programming.  It has also organised training for teenagers, held career fairs, hosted tech entrepreneurs and several other stakeholders.

Conclusion

The company’s entry into the country is important, especially with oil and gas players deepening international traction for business for the country.

Oracle’s entry alone provides an added impetus to other global companies, either from the United States or elsewhere, to take the Ghana and African market seriously. The move also lends credence to Ghana’s quest to make the country the gateway and destination for business.