South Africa is in a position to create 30 000 new jobs in the business process outsourcing sector, including 20 000 in UK-based voice jobs in the next five years. This is according to a report released by Everest Research Institute.

30 000 Business Process Outsourcing jobs

Business Process enabling South Africa (BPeSA), in conjunction with the Business Trust and the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) has announced a plan to create 30 000 new jobs over the next five years. The jobs will be created through growing the BPO and off-shoring sector, with primary focus on the UK call centre voice, comprising about two-thirds of the total.

“To be able to achieve our job creation targets, we plan on optimizing on our key strengths," says Bulelwa Koyana, interim CEO of BPeSA. "We plan on targeting English voice for the UK, providing domain based non-voice BPO and BPO for Sub-Saharan Africa. We also plan to boost offering on Dutch language BPO." Everest Research Institute, which was commissioned for the study, reports that 2,1-million new jobs will be created globally in the next five years.

South Africa's BPO Ranking

Currently, South Africa employs 9 000 full time employees servicing overseas customers, a sector has been growing by 40% year-on-year, with more than 90% of these in call centres. Approximately 54% of all of South Africa’s offshore work is UK voice, ranking South Africa fourth for UK BPO jobs behind India, Philippines, and Northern Ireland. Telecoms and financial services are the predominant verticals. Amongs the chief competitive advantages that South Africa brings to the global BPO sector, particularly call centres, are cultural affinity with the UK and English skills. South Africa ranks third in the world in supplying English speakers at 35 000 people per annum, according to Everest. South Africa is also one of the few locations in the world that can support Dutch, although this requires more training and is more difficult to scale.