By: Elena Kimaru

Companies can turn to outsourcing to connect with new pools of talent while reducing overhead costs. By delegating specific tasks to outside experts, businesses can focus their efforts on developing and perfecting their core offerings while saving money for the company. 

The benefits of outsourcing to Africa are not widely known. Hiring African web developers, content writers, customer service representatives, transcription specialists, or data labelers doesn’t just make good sense for your business; it also empowers individuals living in some of the world’s poorest countries and enables them to provide for them and their families. 

Here are seven countries from across the subcontinent with thriving outsourcing industries to help you operate your business more efficiently and contribute to Africa’s economic growth.

   1.  Ethiopia

With an annual growth rate of 7.7 % Ethiopia, has quickly become a BPO hotspot. Technology has driven the country’s economic and social transformation, so it is not surprising that Ethiopia has positioned itself as a leader in technology development and support.

One of the continent’s most prominent names is Addis-Ababa based EdTech and job-placement company Gebeya. Gebeya trains its employees to become top software engineers in such diverse specialties as AI, AgriTech, Blockchain, FinTech, Internet of Things, Media Production, Telecom, and Gaming. Since its inception in 2016, Gebeya has expanded beyond its Addis Ababa headquarters. The company has recently closed a $2 million seed round investment.

The R&D Group also connects international businesses to Ethiopia’s untapped IT talent. The company proactively addresses potential clients’ concerns about Africa’s unfamiliar business environment by offering flexible contracts that range in length from a couple of weeks to years. This flexibility can encourage global executives who might not think to look to Africa for their business solutions to consider setting up commercial collaborations on the continent.

   2.  Nigeria

Over 200 million people live in Nigeria, making it Africa’s most populous country and home to a large young and dynamic workforce. With hundreds of thousands of English-speaking university graduates joining the labor pool each year, Nigeria is a natural destination for outsourcing your BPO or IT development needs. 

Nigeria’s government is actively seeking to draw outsourcing clients to the country. The Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy has drafted a National Outsourcing Strategy, and industry organizations such as the Association of Outsourcing Practitioners of Nigeria (AOPN) can help you find the best partner for your business.

   3.  South Africa

South Africa is keen on positioning itself as a leading BPO destination. Its high number of native English speakers, favorable time zone, and affordable broadband infrastructure make it ideal for companies looking for competent and cost-effective outsourcing solutions.The South African government has launched a program to promote outsourcing activities. The regulatory environment allows companies to draw on the country’s skilled labor pool to improve overall productivity.

Entrepreneurs and small businesses can make use of South Africa’s thriving outsourcing sector. Companies such as Avirtual help individuals and start-ups be more productive by matching them with available talent to provide virtual support. Avirtual’s services include matching companies with virtual assistants, virtual marketing assistants, and other remote employees. Indox, another South African company, provides BPO services such as outsourced document collection, quality assurance, data verification, data extraction, and call center outsourcing. For legal solutions, companies can turn to Integreon, which provides alternative legal and business solutions through multi-lingual and around the clock support. 

   4.  Kenya

Kenya is a BPO trailblazer on the continent. Its numerous outsourcing companies cover multiple sectors and draw on Kenya’s educated workforce and growing infrastructure to offer high-quality services at a competitive cost. 

Kenya’s diverse BPO landscape includes Corporate staffing services. The company helps clients meet their local HR needs by managing administrative and operational tasks such as issuing contracts, processing payments, advising on labor laws, and providing a physical workstation for outsourced staff. Techno Brain, another Kenyan company, offers consumer and market analytics services in addition to its BPO services. Techno Brain’s services include call center management, back-office services, knowledge process management, and digital media services for their clients across the globe.

   5.  Ghana

Ghana is West Africa’s top BPO outsourcing destination. The country is particularly attractive to companies looking to outsource their technology development and support tasks thanks to its business-friendly regulatory and tax environment, governmental support for the industry, favorable time zone, educated and English-speaking workforce, and robust IT infrastructure.

Ghana’s thriving outsourcing ecosystem includes Trinity Software Center, a social enterprise that connects West African and European companies with local software developers. ACS Ghana, another Ghanaian tech outsourcing company, employs highly skilled African engineers and project managers to provide technology solutions to domestic and international businesses. 

   6.  Mauritius

Mauritius, a small island off Africa’s southeast coast, is widely considered the continent’s most politically and economically stable country. The country’s highly developed infrastructure, coupled with its high number of educated native English and French speakers, and business-friendly tax regime, make Mauritius an ideal outsourcing destination.

Mauritius’ outsourcing landscape includes Mobi Move, a company that employs expert designers, branding strategists, and software developers to help clients grow their business. SIL, a Mauritian tech services company that focuses on IT solutions and services, has grown to include employees in over fifteen countries, with subsidiaries in Namibia and Botswana. 

   7.  Madagascar

Madagascar has the fastest internet in Africa, a large Francophone population, and competitive cost of labor, which has led to the establishment of many BPO companies over the past decade. As a result, Madagascar has begun encroaching on Morocco’s territory and has become a top BPO destination for French speakers. Most BPO companies offer variants of data collection and processing services. Still, some have taken advantage of the robust telecommunications infrastructure to provide technology development and support services.  

Some of the outsourcing companies include Bocasay, which provides IT services such as web development, mobile development, software development, and application management. Oworkers, another Malagasy company, focuses on data entry, processing, validation, categorization, and content moderation services.

Looking to Africa for Your Business Needs

Sub-Saharan Africa might not be first in mind when looking to contract out IT, business processing, or HR services. This will change as the region’s thriving outsourcing continues to expand. Given the variety of services that can be sourced on the continent, companies should look to African talent to maximize the efficiency and profitability of their business while creating jobs on the continent.

By: Leah Ngari

In an increasingly competitive global economy, outsourcing technology development or business processing remains a powerful tool for companies looking to simplify their organizational structure, improve customer service quality, or develop products faster and more cost-effectively. Outsourcing today is no longer limited to call centers. Companies today outsource their IT, finance, and HR functions to cut costs and focus on their core business functions. 

Traditionally, the go-to outsourcing destinations have been Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Now, the growing economy and aging population in these regions is making labor in these regions more expensive and, therefore, less attractive to companies looking for remote, cost-effective staff. Africa, with its large population of educated unemployed and underemployed individuals, is emerging as the next top destination for offshore staff sourcing.

Why companies should consider Africa as their outsourcing destination

Africa is the world’s youngest continent with a median age of about 18 years. A large share of Africa’s population will join the workforce in the next couple of years and face an increasingly competitive labor market. Already today, almost half of Africa’s university graduates struggle to find jobs that utilize their education. The large population of young, working-age people, coupled with the increasing lack of employment within the continent, creates a pool of potential employees for companies looking to outsource. The availability of labor, coupled with the region’s competitive rates, makes Africa an ideal destination that can supply human capital to companies that need it.

Multiple languages are spoken throughout Africa. English is a common first language in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Botswana, whereas Senegalese, Moroccans, Malagasy and others speak French. Mozambique has a large population of Portuguese speakers. As a result, many Africans can communicate easily at a native level with customers and clients worldwide. 

The growing infrastructure in the region also makes it a great offshore outsourcing destination. Many countries like Madagascar enjoy fast speed internet. Fast-growing telecom networks and increased access to technology is creating an enabling environment for digital and remote work.

Africa and Europe lie along similar latitudes, and so African countries and European countries often share overlapping or similar time zones. For instance, South Africa and the UK have a time difference of 2 hours, as do Senegal and France. And where there is a more significant difference between client and outsourcing companies, the increasing adoption of flexible work hours eases these concerns.

Benefits for Africans

Outsourcing to Africa is more than good business; it is also good for Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa has the fastest urbanization rate globally, but job openings are not keeping up. Youth unemployment and underemployment are a growing challenge. International companies that turn to Africa for their staffing needs will create jobs on the continent that can give Africans a chance to learn or perfect a marketable skill while earning a living and feeding their families. Local outsourcing companies that connect clients with qualified professionals contribute to economic growth and private sector expansion on the continent. 

One major worry when it comes to outsourcing is that the jobs created are only temporary. Thanks to technological advances, the type of jobs that are outsourced today might be carried out by AI machines and other digital innovations in the future. But this does not mean that the continent and its people cannot benefit from outsourcing even after the outsourced jobs dry up. The right macroeconomic and social policies can turn the increased employment and economic activity into sustainable, long-term growth.

There is also always the possibility of companies shifting their business models and letting go of employees that rely on their outsourcing services. Andela, a software development company established with the vision of training young Africans to fill junior development positions, let go of hundreds of developers when the proliferation of programming boot camps in Western countries flooded with the market with local entry-level engineers. More recently, the company closed its brick and mortar offices and transitioned to remote working arrangements, making it difficult for some of its African engineers with poor home internet connections to compete with their counterparts elsewhere. 

But the Andela story also offers hope, since much of the laid off tech talent was able to use their skill-sets and experience of working with multinational companies to find new jobs in local tech companies. This, in turn, will benefit the African tech ecosystem. 

Companies looking to source staff in Africa in a cost-effective yet socially responsible way can turn to “impact sourcing.” Impact sourcing involves companies recruiting individuals from lower-income communities and emerging markets and intentionally providing them with sustainable jobs and professional training that can ultimately lead to a lifetime of full employment. By engaging in impact sourcing in Africa, companies can find dedicated, reliable, and cost-effective labor while positively impacting some of the world’s most impoverished areas. 

Services Outsourced to Africa

Many services can be outsourced to Africa, including website and app development, content creation and writing services, transcription, IT support, SEO optimization, data entry and database management, call center services, and data labeling. These services can be acquired using outsourcing companies within the continent and through freelance networks that connect freelancers with potential clients. 

IT outsourcing

Technology-related services provided on the continent range from expert product design and management to the simple tasks such as data labeling. Africa’s is the word’s fastest-growing continent for software development, and major tech giants such as Microsoft and Google offer programming courses and mentorship programs that will further expand the tech talent pool in Africa.  

Tech jobs on the continent are not reserved only for those with advanced programming skills. AI algorithms still rely on human judgment for a large variety of purposes, such as data-labeling and training self-driving cars. As IT infrastructure continues to improve across the continent, Africa is becoming an ideal destination for AI-supporting services that require human perception.

Prominent African IT support and development companies 

Several African companies offering IT and software development services on the continent have expanded beyond their country of origin and opened additional branches throughout the continent. As these companies train and employ an increasing number of Africans, tech talent improves on the continent, boosting Africa’s private sector and its interconnectedness with the global economy.

Below are five pan-African software sourcing companies to keep in mind next time your team is looking for experienced engineers or entry-level programmers:

1. Code of Africa is a company that trains software developers in Rwanda and Kenya and connects them to the European market, specifically targeting Germany, Australia, and Switzerland.
2. Techno Brain Group provides professional and academic training in IT to Africans through its training branch based in Kenya. It also offers consultancy and outsourcing services to governments, NGOs, and private organizations across the globe.
3. Tunga works to source employment for skilled Africans with limited access to job opportunities in the field of software development. It targets individuals from impoverished backgrounds to help them get jobs in the IT sector. It currently works with African developers from Uganda, Nigeria, and Egypt.
4. Andela trains software engineers and assigns them to different leading tech companies worldwide; their client list includes Coursera and Github, and their engineers come from Nigeria, Egypt, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, and more. Originally, the company trained its own junior software engineers. However, it has recently transitioned to hiring more senior engineers due to the increased number of junior developers in its target market, the USA. While it currently only operates a brick-and-mortar training program in Kigali, Rwanda, Andela has partnered with Facebook to offer remote technical training that will give individuals all over the world the opportunity to gain marketable skills. 
5. Software Group offers digital banking and integration solutions for financial service providers. It serves clients from diverse locations, including Ghana, India, the United States, and Australia. 

Conclusion

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has seen outsourcing investments reduce drastically, numerous companies have been forced to slow down their operations. Cutting costs has become necessary for survival, and businesses need to go back to the drawing board and restrategize. While the popular outsource markets for IT and software-related needs in countries like Vietnam and Ukraine continues to operate, Africa is slowly emerging as a strong contender in the IT sector. 

Many tech hubs are popping up across the continent from Ethiopia’s silicon valley of Sheba Valley to Kenya’s Silicon Savannah. By outsourcing tech development to Africa, you can create more employment on the continent while benefiting from the readily available skilled labor offered.

By: Leah Ngari

Did you know that the largest share of female-owned businesses worldwide is found in Uganda, Ghana, and Botswana? In fact, despite the numerous barriers that businesswomen in Africa face, Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region in the world where the majority of entrepreneurs are women. Indeed, as the saying goes – necessity is the mother of all inventions. Women will get creative to find ways to feed and care for their families, and so today, most women in the region start businesses out of necessity.

Traditionally, women who got their start trading small quantities of goods and rose to prosperity through the fabric trade and traditional market place were affectionately nicknamed “Mama Benz,” after the Mercedes-Benz cars, they could purchase with their profits. Today, the high number of women-owned businesses showcases African women’s capacity to create their own opportunities. While many of these businesses remain a one-person operation, some individuals have turned their idea or product into a successful business and scaled it on a regional or global level.

The following women embody the diversity of female entrepreneurship on the continent:

       1.  Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu – Ethiopia

Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu founded SoleRebels with the goal of building Ethiopia’s first global shoe brand. Born and raised in the Zenabwork area, an impoverished community in Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa, Bethlehem quit her accountant job at the age of thirty to found a shoe manufacturing company that went from providing jobs to members of her community to whose annual revenue now exceeds USD 200 million a year.

The company has made more than just a positive economic impact. SoleRebels is also mindful of the environment and creates eco-friendly shoes by using recycled car tires to make the soles and laces as well as local fabrics. Since its inception in 2005, SoleRebels has expanded internationally and now operates physical stores across various countries such as the USA, Germany, Singapore, and Greece. The shoes are hand-crafted to order in Addis Ababa by local artisans using traditional fabric and shoemaking methods. Through SoleRebels, Alemu inspires other entrepreneurs in developing countries to dream big and tap into local talent and resources to benefit the larger society.

       2.  Joy Ndungutse and Janet Nkubana – Rwanda

These sisters co-founded Gahaya Links, a handicraft company that creates home decor pieces and jewelry. Founded in 1994, this crafts company partnered with local women weavers in Rwanda to create hand-made crafts – such as Rwanda’s special ‘peace basket’, the national symbol of peace. Gahaya Links has empowered over 5,000 women in 52 cooperatives across Rwanda. They have partnered with brands like Walmart, Macy’s, and Kate Spade, exporting their products outside of Rwanda to a larger international market. Ndungutse and Nkubana’s success demonstrates the power of working together as a community for a common goal.

       3.  Mariam Lawani – Nigeria

With the growing economy, numerous industrial advancements, and rapid urbanization, waste management has become asignificant environmental issue requiring attention in Africa. Mariam Lawani, founder of Greenhill Recycling, has set out to solve the problem of waste management and poverty, beginning with the densely populated areas in Nigeria. Greenhill Recycling gives households an opportunity to receive “Green points” for their recyclable materials, which can then be traded in for items such as school supplies, groceries, or utility bill payment. Greenhill picks up the recyclables directly from participants’ homes, processes the recyclable materials, and sells them to manufacturers to be used as raw material input for the manufacture of new products, such as polyester fiber and floor carpets.

Greenhill Recycling empowers locals to take part in protecting their environment while providing access to the necessary products and services. And Lawani is already planning her next step – tackling Africa’s infrastructure deficit by transforming plastic waste into roads.

       4.  Odunayo Eweniyi – Nigeria

Odunayo Eweniyi tapped into her passion for technology to create tools that have helped over 200,000 users save money and manage their finances. Eweniyi created PiggyBank (later renamed PiggyVest). The app provides a safe platform for people to save up, putting in as much or as little funds as they can to work towards their desired savings. It also allows low and mid-income people to invest in different sectors, thus creating a saving and investment culture for those who would otherwise not have access to such opportunities due to limited knowledge and wealth. Odunayo gives hope to women who, like her, would like to venture into STEM-related fields which are still highly dominated by men.

       5.  Laurettah Sibanda – South Africa

The building and construction sector in Southern Africa hosts the founder of Atlantis Construction Group & Developments. After founding businesses in gold mining and media,  before finally settling on construction. The full-service building and contracting company constructs both residential and commercial projects, and currently operates in Botswana and South Africa. Sibanda plans to expand to Zambia and Zimbabwe.

       6.  Michelle Adelman – Botswana

Michelle Adelman built a business to solve Africa’s food security problems. Accite is a project development and impact investment firm that funds technology-led, sustainable commercial agriculture projects that spur economic diversification and employment of youth and women. Their first solution, Go Fresh!, uses greenhouse and hydroponics technology to grow vegetables all year round – a significant accomplishment in Botswana, home to the Kalahari Desert.

Accite has created employment opportunities for Botswana’s youth, with local youth leaders running the various projectscurrently in place including Fodder Green (high-quality animal feed), Crossover Meats (affordable and eco-friendly beef alternatives) and Infinite Foods (a market platform for plant-based foods). Her startup shows the economic potential in building business models based on solving social problems in Sub-Saharan Africa.

        7.  Brenda Katwesigye – Uganda

With a background in IT and an interest in entrepreneurship, Brenda Katwesigye tried several business ideas before settling on Wazi Vision. Her drive to bring quality healthcare to everyone led to the creation of Wazi Vision, a startup that provides affordable eye care solutions.

The company uses a mobile application and a virtual reality (VR) kit to help those living far from an optometrist diagnose vision defects. Wazi Vision also provides an eye care solution, manufacturing eyeglasses made from recycled materials – which slashes the production cost by over 20%.

Investing in African women

Africa has made impressive progress in closing the gender gap on the continent, but there is still much room for improvement. Despite the high rates of female entrepreneurship, capital investments in male-owned firms are often up to six times greater than capital investments in female-owned companies.

One way to economically empower women is to fund female-owned businesses. Governments can also put in place policies that promote female entrepreneurship to increase women’s access to capital and networks that will enable them to realize their entrepreneurial aspirations. Public education programs can also encourage women to dream big – unfortunately, women themselves often do not believe their business is worthy of outside investment, and so they self-select themselves out of the credit market all too often by not applying for loans.

Economically empowered women lift up their surroundings: women will reinvest up to 90% of their income in the education, health, and nutrition of their family and community (compared with up to 40% for men). Supporting African businesswomen can transform Africa.

By: Elenah Kimaru

Rwanda is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Between 2009 and 2019, the country’s real GDP grew an average of 7% every year, with the World Bank projecting an average of 7.5-8% annual growth in the medium term. The IMF projects that Rwanda will be the 5th fastest growing economy in the world in 2020.

Most of the economic activity feeding Rwanda’s current success would have been impossible to carry out fifteen years ago, when less than 5% of Rwandans had access to electricity: In 2005, 75% of the country’s urban population and 98.7% of the rural population lacked electricity access.

Since then, Rwanda’s power generation capacity has experienced rapid growth. As of December 2019, 53% of Rwandan households enjoyed electricity access. Rwanda’s electrification enabled economic growth across the board. Between 2005 and 2019, the services, manufacturing, and industrial sectors more than doubled in size, and a bustling high-tech industry emerged in the country which boasts such success as the Mara phone – the first “Made in Africa” smartphone.

Rwanda’s electrification is the consequence of the government, the private sector, and non-profit organizations working together to obtain the best results in the most efficient manner. The government of Rwanda has set a strategic priority of universal electrification by 2024 in its National Electrification Plan and has partnered with private companies to develop the country’s electricity generation capacity. As of 2018, over half (52%) of the energy capacity was privately owned, with financing often coming from third parties such as the World Bank and USAID.

As of 2019, the bulk (47%) of Rwanda’s total installed capacity to generate electricity came from hydropower generated from Rwanda’s many rivers, with diesel (26%), peat (7%), solar (5%), methane (12%), and imports (2%) make up the rest. Today, 39% of households are connected directly to the national grid, and 14% use off-grid solutions.