Africa is the last wave of outsroucing | Hacker News Reader

Africa is the last wave of outsroucing

bbc.co.uk

43 pointsashnyc26 comments

There is only on last place let on this earth where you can have a labor arbitrage, and africa it is. Asia still has some room but africa will be the last big labor pool

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Kenya has an advantage over most other cheap countries for call center outsourcing, and it's the accent. The kenyan accent is easy to understand and more crisp, compared to accents like Indian, Chinese or West African. See sample: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U1h51HiqTg

I don't know if I agree with this completely. I lived in Nairobi in the summer of 2004 and had a real difficult time understanding people for the first couple of weeks.

However, the people generally do speak quite slowly with melodic voices and emphasized pronunciation.

Which Indian accent? Peter Sellers'?

Kenya is interesting. Heard of a competitor doing it while I was in Asia. I looked at Ethiopia, but the cost of telecom is huge. With Kenya getting a fiber and some semblance of stability that alone is a game changer. Not sure what the labor differential is, but English+Fiber+Relative Stability == pretty good candidate. Assuming cost is equal or below Philippines, I would definitely consider it.

A friend of mine from grad school was born to a Nigerian father (who now practices medicine in South Africa) and spent a good bit of time there growing up. He said that a handful of people there are desperate for the ability to start firms like this because of the large number of native-English speakers and the fact that they are in the same time zone as England. There's definitely a belief among successful Africans that Africa could be the next step for outsourcing.

However, they all knew that it wasn't something that could work because of the perception of doing business in Nigeria. The article makes it seem like there is a still a little of that concern with Kenya, but it looks like they may be the ultimate winner in this arena.

You can fix the typo. [ outsroucing -> outsourcing ]

The linked to map of the undersea cable network is pretty interesting as well:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11864350

What about outsourcing to Russia when it becomes a reasonable place for foreign firms to do business? It seems like that wave is yet to come.

Russia is problematic in that its government is notoriously corrupt and controlled by the mob and Russian business interests, but its workers are not poor (and therefore cheap) enough for foreign investors to be able to overlook Russia's political problems.

Even for higher-level jobs like engineering or software engineering? I don't imagine call centers popping up in Russia, more like contract engineering firms that do work for American companies. Or is that possible and happening already in the current climate?

Edit/PS: The political problems are exactly why I think the wave is yet to come.

"Russia is problematic in that its government is notoriously corrupt and controlled by the mob and Russian business interests, "

Don't listen to Western media. I'm sure Russian government would be supportive of anything that provides jobs to the working class.

Russia's government only seems to be (practically) supportive of opportunities for the "siloviks" clan members. A quintessential plutarchy.

(I am a Russian national).

I'd advise that you read about the demise of Yukos, formerly one of Russia's largest companies.

A good case in point. It is illustrative that the demise was initiated by the arrest of its owner, who was the only Russian oligarch who "came clean" by publicly acknowledging the corruption of the Russia's top businesses and state, and called for transparency in both.

I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted.... I thought I made a stupid but checking salaries here(1) and here(2) (first Google results that popped up) it looks like American software engineers make almost three times as much as Russian software engineers. It's not as big a ratio as India, but wouldn't it be enough to attract work from American companies if the business climate was right?

(1) http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer_%2...

(2) http://www.payscale.com/research/RU/Job=Software_Engineer_%2...

Business is about profit & loss. Do not expect patriotism.

    Chinese economy  = American capitalism - Human rights
    Indian economy   = American capitalism + Wage slavery
    African economy   = American capitalism + Slavery

In globalized economy, jobs will go where businesses get maximum profit.

Or cheap people will come to where businesses get maximum profits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insourcing versus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsourcing

Race to the bottom.

>>Race to the bottom.

Probably, but you seem to imply that is bad?!

What happens when all the world's areas of dirt poor people has been "used up" by outsourcing, so they lack dirt poor people? [Edit: That is, what will happen after the race to the bottom?]

I really don't have an idea about the answer. But the world will be better, with much fewer poor people.

It's going to be strange to live in a world where there is no longer a double-digit percentage of poor people. There may still be pockets of poor in areas at war or under very dysfunctional regimes. But poor continents or regions will be things of the past. It's so incredibly different from anything that has happened before in all of recorded history.

Will the world become a better place?

That depends on whom you asked. From my perspective the world was a better place in the past but that's my personal opinions.

Has India become a better country because of all the offshoring? Their GDP might increase, but what about their quality of life? What about those overwork IT workers?

There are 2 things I learned in life so far:

1) There's this thing called "balance".

One gives, the other receives. One gets something, the other lose something. Addition, subtraction.

2) Money is the root of all evil.

I've never perceived that money can make the world a better place. In 1998, money nearly destroys Asia. In 2008, money hurts western countries.

US residents probably have more money than the other countries. But at the same time, check out the obesity level of US residents. Check out how many trash US produces. Why do you think people are buzzing over "green" thing.

If you have more money, you will want more of everything. The end result of this cycle hasn't been good so far.

As of today, the world has more problems than it was. Eliminate one, then two or more problems will arise.

>"Has India become a better country because of all the offshoring? "

Yes, yes, a million times yes. How is it even a question?

http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le...

[Edit]

Obviously I'm ignorant. Excuse me.

Obviously you neither know every area, nor have you thought about every type of problem. I haven't done that either. Or anyone else. The important thing is to love learning.

If you haven't thought at least a bit about a problem area, you don't know enough to realize that you don't understand it. That has happened to me many times.

I'm sorry if I was rough in the last comment.

I don't know if you're a kid or really trolling on Xmas? I'll bite shortly, to be polite.

≈>>One gives, the other receives. One gets something, the other lose something. Addition, subtraction.

Please look up the definition of "zero sum game". Then realize that modern economy really isn't one. Most people are winning, in the present world.

Exceptions are people in countries with conflict or with corrupt/dictatorial regimes.

>>There are 2 things I learned in life so far:

>>2) Money is the root of all evil.

How about learning something from history?

Start by reading some books about poor people's lives and how it feels to bury your kids.

People die today, because of lack of food. Children still get organ damage (including brain) from too little food.

The point is, below a certain level of money/resources, life gets bad. Everyone should be happy that an increasing part of humanity can go away from that.

Please go look at Hans Rosling on TED:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/speakers/hans_rosling.html

>>As of today, the world has more problems than it was. Eliminate one, then two or more problems will arise.

For my information, how would you describe someone that has a total lack of sense of size of problems?! Someone that confuses losing money on a stock market crash -- with seeing your loved ones die young from treatable diseases?

(And I'm not arguing everything is better than it used to be.)

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