Oracle to Motivate for Stronger Public-Private Partnerships to Accelerate Infrastructure Development in Africa

25 September 2006
Content from a Premium Partner
Corporate Council on Africa (Washington, DC)
press release

Washington, DC — The opening plenary of the U.S.-Africa Infrastructure Conference in Washington, D.C., on September 28, will see a motivation for Information Technology (IT) companies to create stronger partnerships with government in Africa. Desi Lopez Fafié, Vice President and Managing Director of African Operations for Oracle Corporation, will be a panelist at the plenary entitled Why Infrastructure. He will present along with Ambassador John Danilovich, Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and Michael Mah'moud, Director, NEPAD & Regional Integration & Trade Department, African Development Bank (AfDB).

Twenty-two African governments have national IT plans, said Lopez Fafié. IT has moved up in priority from being a tool to automate and accelerate processes, to being a key driver of infrastructure creation and reform. Public private partnerships between ICT vendors and governments are succeeding in helping build expertise and systems that can effectively exploit and manage the wealth of the continent.

Oracles ' government-aligned activities in Africa include skills development at tertiary level through the Oracle Academic Initiative, IT education at school level as a founder member and consortium leader of the NEPAD E-Schools Demonstration Project, and the development of a treasury software system that conforms to the World Bank's Treasury Reference Model as described in WB Technical Paper 505.

Lopez Fafié said, "When a company commits to helping build infrastructure in the form of skills, business best practice, and corporate governance, it creates a platform for more business opportunities in a country. In turn, those countries that better organize themselves around the concept of information-driven infrastructure are well positioned to deliver more with the same budget. An information driven infrastructure also positions a country to more fully integrate into the global economy."

The session will be held in the Grand Ballroom of the Bethesda Marriott Hotel on 5151 Pooks Hill Road, Bethesda, on September 29, 2006 from 9:00 AM-10:00 am.

Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the worlds largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, visit http://www.oracle.com.

CCA, established in 1993, is a nonpartisan 501(3)(c) membership organization of nearly 200 U.S. companies dedicated to strengthening the commercial relationship between the U.S. and Africa. CCA members represent nearly 85 percent of total U.S. private sector investments in Africa. Visit CCA's website at www.africacncl.org

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