Africa’s got talent

By Brad Bloom

One of the things I enjoy most about my role as co-founder and COO of aston holmes is the time spent discussing the market with people, business and TA Leaders. Almost the first agenda item these days is that of hiring trends, TA transformation and the potential impact of technology in the age of AI.  

With 2024 continuing to deliver sluggish growth, organisations are scrambling for cost efficiencies and profitability to meet investor expectations. As such, many firms are increasingly hiring into lower cost hubs, either directly or through outsource partners.  

I believe the following three trends have become clear: 

• Learning from “being forced into remote”, business leaders are increasingly comfortable with higher value tasks being delivered remotely. 

• Global CFOs are prioritising margins – either themselves or using a third party BPO provider typically leveraging established lower cost hubs. 

• Whilst AI capabilities are still being understood, most global transformation programmes expect to achieve headcount savings through technology.  

So what do these trends mean? Simply put organisations are using the lessons from the pandemic, post pandemic and the 2023 layoffs to re-build slightly differently. Using either internal resource, global capacity or third party partners, many organisations are hiring extensively in locations such as Eastern Europe, Asia and especially Africa.  

The world is looking to Africa, and especially South Africa, for their talent needs.

A key learning for me from my time spent at the Singularity University, especially on a Deloitte case study, is that AI is likely to impact ‘horizontally rather than vertically’ – i.e. think horizontal activities such as admin and reporting rather than verticals such as HR or Customer Service.  

Therefore any future transformation to further enable technology will be more efficient and impactful if that horizontal is already being clustered possibly in a hub or third party.   

Blending immediate need for efficiency and potential technology enabled savings has created the perfect business case to off-shore or outsource.  

This trend is further validated by PE analysis which shows larger BPO providers reporting record volumes in outsourcing activity, yet falling valuations (based on unknown AI impact). 

Okay that makes sense, but the heading implies something around TA in Africa?  

Glad you asked! South Africa has for some time been a global rockstar in the BPO space, and is the long-running number two ranked location for Customer Experience outsourcing (Clayton Williams, CapeBPO).

However in what is now being labelled the ‘outsourcing boom’, it’s clear that the world sees talent beyond Customer Experience in Africa. Large companies such as RELX, WPP and PwC (and more) are building sophisticated delivery or advisory teams across technology, finance and consulting. In particular these teams are being scaled in South Africa, Kenya and Egypt and will serve global internal or external customers.  

Africa’s growth is perhaps not so surprising. In 2020, McKinsey highlighted South Africa as the BPO location of choice for the UK, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Their analysis noted South Africa was 50% more cost effective than Poland. Additionally, South African teams were able to deliver 90% of services fully remotely within 10 days when the first lockdown hit, as opposed to only 40% of their Indian counterparts. 

It’s been awesome to see TA following this exact trend. In fact the number of TA professionals supporting global companies has increased by at least 20% every year since the pandemic. This growth means there is a solid talent pool of recruiters with global recruitment experience that will grow every year, exponentially.  

From investment banks, the Magnificent Seven to niche recruitment agencies, the world is looking to Africa* and especially South Africa for their talent needs.   

Deloitte’s chief economist recently shared that the UK is now the fourth largest exporter globally, almost exclusively exporting services. As the cofounder of a global, UK-headquartered business with African roots, and one that has been pioneering Africa-based talent in our solutions for over a decade, I would love to see Africa follow the UK’s trend and become a major player in the TA outsourcing space. 

*Ishpal, our CEO whose childhood roots stem from Kenya, has been telling me about the TA talent in Kenya for some time, we’ve had several clients approach us to build with them in Nairobi. So watch this space!