Major boost for Africa’s emerging outsourcing sector
Over 250 delegates from the region’s rapidly developing outsourcing and contact centre industry attended the Third African Outsourcing & Contact Centre Conference organized by AITEC Africa in Nairobi over 27-28 November 2007.
The intensive programme of presentations and workshops over the two days attracted both existing BPO operators and enterprises planning to invest in new outsourcing operations. Over 30 outsourcing and contact centre experts made presentations that inspired and excited the delegates. Speakers from South Africa, the UK, USA, India, Egypt, Ghana, Mauritius and Kenya shared a wide range of experiences, best practices in technology deployment and marketing techniques. Feedback from the delegates was resoundingly positive. Several senior businessmen confirmed that they intended to invest in the development of BPO operations and that the conference had given them valuable business ideas. The event included an exhibition where 35 suppliers of equipment and systems for contact centres, as well as established and recently launched BPO operators, reported doing excellent business. The Kenya ICT Board, which was the country partner for the event, sponsored a pavilion for SMEs in the BPO sector to give them exposure to local and international customers, partners and investors. All of them reported positive results. The conference was opened by Dr Bitange Ndemo, Kenya’s Permanent Secretary for Information & Communications. He urged the business community to take advantage of the enabling environment the government had created. He highlighted the bandwidth subsidy scheme for BPO operators that his ministry has set up using World Bank funding. His Minister, Mutahi Kagwe, who closed the conference at the end of the second day, reinforced this message, and also called on financial institutions to take a less conservative approach when considering funding applications from companies and entrepreneurs planning to set up outsourcing operations. The conference highlighted the great potential in Africa not just for BPO but also for KPO (Knowledge Process Outsourcing) in high-value services in varied areas such as HR, procurement, transcriptions, animation and specialized software development. Hussein Kamel, Planning & Decision Support Manager at Xceed Contact Centre in Egypt, in a provocative presentation entitled “Africa: The next Bangalore?” called on the region’s outsourcing industry to co-operate in developing a strong regional brand and undertake joint marketing exercises. Paul Kukubo, CEO of the Kenya ICT Board pledged the Board’s strong support for the BPO sector as a top priority on its agenda and said it would be developing a strong national outsourcing brand for Kenya. It is the government’s target that the BPO sector should provide direct and indirect employment for 100,000 Kenyans by 2012. One of the Ghanaian delegates commented: “Kenya is blessed to have such strong support for its ICT sector from government. We would very pleased to have such support in Ghana.” In a keynote address, Kerry Hallard, board member of the UK’s National Outsourcing Association, said that Kenya had great potential in the UK’s outsourcing market and gave the delegate valuable pointers on how to market services to UK companies. Another keynote presentation was by Mark Hill, Vice-President for Global Operations at Teleforma in Mauritius. He emphasized the need for outsourcing operators in various countries to develop alliances and share work-loads in order to spread risks and maximize capacity. ends |
