Build talent in Africa to achieve objectives globally

Traditionally, companies in Australia, the UK, and North America have looked towards Southern or Southeast Asia to supplement and augment their local talent pools. The Philippines was an early participant in providing talent for executive assistance and accounting, and India, with its emphasis on STEM education focussed on IT and engineering, alongside successive governments aggressively promoting its capacity for outsourcing, became the go-to location for tech developers for North America and Australia. In Europe, companies have looked to former Eastern European countries like Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine for tech talent. These countries invested heavily in IT infrastructure to make themselves compatible with destinations in the English-speaking world.

Africa, by contrast, has had less attention paid to it. It’s physical distance from Europe may account for some of this, but additionally, until recently, many countries in Africa have lacked sophistication and robustness in their IT infrastructure.

In the past decade, however, infrastructure has improved, and talent pools in Asia have become more expensive and harder to acquire and retain. With high quality universities spread across South Africa, for instance, huge opportunity is available for international companies to take advantage of highly trained cost-effective talent, that can provide a 5x return on investment over hiring a similarly skilled person locally.