Accra, Ghana, November 20, 2017//-United States’ Information Technology giant Oracle Corporation is transforming lives in Africa with the deployment of bespoke ICT solutions to address the challenges of Ghana, Nigeria and other African countries in which it operates.
Bayo Sanni, Managing Director of Oracle Nigeria, a subsidiary of Oracle, who disclosed this in an interview, explained that; ” Oracle offers a comprehensive and fully integrated stack of applications and platform services that allows governments and organizations to modernize their processes, to foster innovation and agility and transform their business practices for operational excellence”.
For instance by leveraging Oracle solution, the Federal Government of Nigeria “has been able to check the problem of Ghost Workers and has been able to save billions of Naira making the money available to government to provide better services to citizens”, he stated.
“Take another example, an organization uses Oracle applications and associated Oracle technologies to manage collection, processing, marketing and distribution of agriculture and food products thereby achieving greater operational, supply chain and business efficiencies”. It also helps to increase food production in the Africa’s largest economy, Mr Sanni added.
In the area of energy, the ICT giant is working with the Nigerian government and other governments across its operational countries to address challenges.
In Mr Sanni’s own words: “Around the world, utilities are under pressure due to citizens’ demand for energy. What the government needs to do is to invest in initiatives like Smart Grid and Smart Metering that add intelligence to the existing infrastructure”.
He added that Oracle offers utility experts, mission-critical software applications, a rock-solid operational software suite, and world-leading middleware and technology that can help address these challenges.
Also, there is Paystack a payment solution that helps Nigerian businesses accept payments from anyone, anywhere in the world, Mr Sanni stated.
According to him, Ghana is a strategic country to Oracle. Oracle has a regional office in Accra to further the company’s clouds portfolio expansion across the country as well as provide sales and consultancy service across the sub region.
Mr Sanni also emphasised that Oracle has a team of local experts that are trained to look at global solutions and adapt it to the current realities.
“We believe that one size does not fit all. We also have dedicated local partners who have differentiated themselves in the market after going through one of our 120+ product and solution specialization. This way they can provide relevant solutions ready to this market.
This also helps us to create jobs and contribute in our own little way in developing the needed skills and expertise that is sometimes lacking in this part of the world”, he said.
Is there a future for local tech firms?
He is emphatic that there is a huge potential to do more in local tech space. “However, looking at where we are today, we have practically leaped frog from where we used to be. Now we have local tech firms that develop world class application. We have locally developed apps like Truppr, a social tool that connects people to other people that are interested in making exercise a lifestyle”, Mr Sanni said.
Collaborating with fintech firms
” We work with a lot of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in the financial services industry. Our ISV strategy is to help our partners architect, deploy and scale their commercial applications”.
This is done through solution development within a vibrant and dynamic ecosystem. This is coupled that with a scalable go-to-market strategy to ensure that they not only build world class applications but also get to market quickly, at scale, the Oracle Nigeria MD explained.
Future of ICT
Mr Sanni and Oracle believe that as technology becomes more pervasive, they would continue to see the need for quick adoption of new technologies amongst various industries. This adoption, they say will drive disruption, innovation and fierce competition amongst many.
Collaboration, new partnerships amongst global and local vendors will boom, in the hope that the services and offerings made available in Nigeria, and beyond, allow for Africa to become a window to the world. Providing services unique to the challenges we face as a continent.
Nigeria’s government has a vision to be one of the largest economies of the world by 2020. To deliver this vision, it is important to ensure that there is a unified approach to driving digital adoption across the country, using innovative, accessible and modern tools to build a formidable digital economy in Africa.
He also envisioned that emerging technologies such as Internet of Things ( IoT) would create the next industrial revolution, it will play a key role in how government agencies utilize data for better outcomes and significantly cut cost.
Mr Sanni therefore used the opportunity to advice countries to accelerate their digital growth to remain competitive in this global village.
The latest Digital Evolution Index, developed by The Fletcher School at Tufts University in Massachusetts, puts Nigeria in the Break Out Countries bucket which means the country has a relatively low score for digital evolution but it has the potential to become a strong digital economy.
“Without technology, there won’t be any sustainable development. Technology will give us a competitive edge. We need to start investing heavily in technology”, he further admonished.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report
Email: mk68008@gmail.com
