Oracle has expressed its readiness to increase the number of startups supported under the Ghana-Oracle Digital Enterprise Program (GODEP) from 500 to 1500, Ghana’s Ambassador to the United States of America (USA) has said.
 
Speaking to JoyBusiness at the annual Oracle OpenWorld event in San Francisco, California, Dr. Barfuor Adjei-Barwuah said “Well, it has been a particularly well-organized undertaking and you get the feeling that this is the place to be as far as maintaining our kind of intent to improve on our information strategy and how we apply it to our economic development.” 
 
He added, “We have had two particularly good meetings with top executives of oracle and I’m quite sure that we going to review some of the issues in the MOU to the extent that Oracle is agreeable to for instance increasing the number of startups from 500 to 1500 and then also ensuring to that we going to amend some of the issues in the MOU to suit our particular purposes.” 
 
The Ghana-Oracle Digital Enterprise Programme (GODEP), it is part of the Oracle Global Startup Ecosystem, Oracle’s programme for entrepreneurs and innovators worldwide will enable at least 500 local start-ups to access and utilize the Oracle Cloud technology.
 
Ghana is the first country in Africa chosen by Oracle for its Global Partnership on startups.

 The Ghana-Oracle Digital Enterprise Program was launched in April to develop 500 technology-enabled startups in Ghana. So far, they have organised two selection events that have seen impressive ideas from startups in Accra and Kumasi.
 
Oracle OpenWorld
 
Oracle OpenWorld is an annual event showcasing product features and other news from Oracle Corporation. It is a multi-venue gathering held in San Francisco (USA), Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Shanghai (China). Each venue event is, in turn, a multi-day affair, usually beginning on a Sunday and running to Thursday.
 
OpenWorld is targeted at a range of Oracle current and potential customers such as IT management and decision-makers as well as line users of Oracle software. OpenWorld 2011 drew about 45,000 people at the San Francisco venue. 

 
Delegation
 
A Government of Ghana delegation led by the ambassador to the United States of America Dr. Barfuor Adjei-Barwuah and supported by the Deputy Minister for Communications George Andah, Prof. Kwaku Appiah-Adu - Head of Delivery Unit, Vice President’s Secretariat and Dr. Mohammed Sani-Abdulai Project Director - Public Financial Management Reforms Project, attended sessions at OpenWorld and held high level meetings with Senior Executives of Oracle. 
 
Key among the discussions were leveraging new technology to improve government applications to improve citizen service delivery, providing entrepreneurial support and skills development to expedite the digitization and economic development agenda. 

The team also had a first-hand understanding of how smart cities can be developed and implemented to drive growth.