Kenya has an immediate opportunity to become the next big player in the outsourcing industry.
Current estimates indicate that 6 million jobs worldwide are outsourced to call centers with Africa accounting for only 58,000 of those jobs; the vast majority of these jobs are in North and South Africa. In Anglophone Africa Ghana, Uganda and Kenya present the best opportunities for new growth in outsourcing on account of their progressive government and regulatory environments, their well developed technical and educational infrastructure, existing or imminent fiber optic networks and their aggressive new employment goals.
With cost pressures and quality issues beginning to occur in the more traditional outsourcing destinations such as India, Philippines and South Africa, more and more companies are asking "Is there an alternative?"
Kenya is an obvious choice with its high number of university graduates, neutral "anglo" accents and low cost labour. The industry is new and has not yet been fully discovered by western companies because it has not been connected to the rest of the world by fiber optic cable, the first such connection being due mid-2008. In addition, the West's past perceptions of this part of the world have also had a negative impact on Kenya's ability to grow as an outsourcing country. However, we believe these perceptions are changing and will not stop the region's outsourcing industry from emulating India's remarkable progress over the past ten years.
Kenya has an economy that has begun to take off in the past two years, increasingly sophisticated financial markets and altogether better private and public sector leadership at any time since independence.
The generation of Kenyans under the age of 30 has been exposed to the outside world through the internet, cell phones, satellite TV and a free press. A large proportion of those aged 22-30 have studied or lived abroad and have brought back with them the knowledge but also the experience of service levels that have not been widely supplied or demanded in their home country - until now.