By Chris Maclay

This is part 2 of a 3-parter on global demand. It explores why the Jobtech Alliance’s systems change approach necessitates intervention to grow global demand for African talent. Part 1 explores why employment interventions and jobtech platforms must tap into global demand to create meaningful jobs for Africa’s growing labour force and Part 3 discusses an innovative business model for expanding demand for ICT services in Africa.

In early 2023, shortly after the Jobtech Alliance began offering venture support, I had the opportunity to review the pitch deck of an impressive jobtech platform. Let’s call it Digi.

The start-up, based in Uganda, was focused on vetting ICT talent across East Africa and connecting these professionals with clients both within Africa and globally. The platform was visually impressive, with a well-designed website and an intuitive user interface, and utilising AI-enabled matching before ChatGPT was even a thing.

‘Global demand is really where the sweet spot is,’ the founder explained, ‘someone in the village in Uganda can now work for a big client in the US. There’s much bigger demand there, and much greater willingness to pay.’

The Challenges in Tapping Global Demand

However, the key question remained: how could Digi effectively access this global demand from its base in Uganda? That’s where this platform’s strategy encountered significant challenges. While the founder emphasised that their service was ‘42% cheaper than hiring the equivalent in the US,’ and that their ‘end-to-end user experience enables customers to manage all their talent from one portal,’ these advantages, while valuable, were insufficient. The critical issue was that without awareness of Digi or African talent at large, and without a strong market presence in the US, the company would struggle to secure clients. This was compounded by potential clients’ reluctance to hire from what they perceived as an unfamiliar or high-risk market.

The unfortunate reality is that Digi was not an isolated case. Despite offering a quality product and being led by an ambitious founder, it represented one of hundreds of platforms across Africa that would struggle, and likely fail, because they lack an effective connection to the global demand for African talent.

A Systems Change Vision: Addressing Global Demand Gaps

It was only when developing our systems change vision with Wasafiri that we were compelled to confront this challenge head-on. 

Above: How systems change happens in the jobtech sector

We had been working to articulate our understanding of the dynamics within the jobtech ecosystem across Africa. While it was relatively straightforward to identify ‘lack of investment’ as a significant barrier to the growth of jobtech platforms, we were reluctant to accept the fundamental disconnect between African talent and global labour markets as our problem. 

The issue of global demand for African talent is, of course, a bigger issue than any one project could ever solve. Uneven trading relationships that go back hundreds of years. Reputation questions, mistrust, and racism in hiring. There are practical barriers, such as strong competition from Asia (which is a few decades ahead in the outsourcing space), insufficient ICT training and infrastructure, and regulatory challenges such as non-compliance with GDPR, to name a few.

Commercial Sprints in Overcoming Barriers

Through our work with various platforms in the digital work space – ranging from augmented staffing platform Tana to the data annotation company AfricaAI – we consistently found ourselves supporting platforms in what we referred to as ‘commercial sprints.’ This involved providing commercial strategy, marketing support, sales training, and more to help them increase global demand for their services. However, it became clear that we cannot provide commercial venture support for every African digital work company. Moreover, every platform faces the same systemic constraints in accessing global demand: issues of visibility, trust, reputation, and entrenched historic norms. A lack of global demand for African talent thus represents a classic ‘tragedy of the commons.’

Insights for Growing Global Demand

But systemic change requires dealing with complex problems. Specifically, problems that no individual project can solve. 

As a result, we have found ourselves increasingly engaged in addressing the global demand gap, driven by the question: How might we grow global employment of African talent through jobtech platforms? Through these explorations, we’ve identified several key insights:

The Need to Consider Global Policy in Growing Demand for African Talent: Germany seems to be the only northern market that has truly recognised its impending demographic crisis and labour shortage. However, while countries such as Kenya are making strides in developing policies that facilitate outsourcing, relatively little is known about possible regulatory barriers within Germany itself. In partnership with Maximilian Schulz, we’re conducting a small piece of research to assess whether policy barriers would prevent German companies from hiring African talent. Our study has found that EU-wide policies, rather than German-specific ones, are more likely to pose barriers to outsourcing. Therefore, helping African BPOs comply with GDPR and other EU regulations will be crucial for building trust with German firms. Additionally, German and EU policy dialogues and alignments with their African partner countries will be significant enablers of this process. A detailed report on this study will be published on the Jobtech Alliance website soon.

The Opportunity to Achieve Quick Wins Through Direct Sales and Government Collaboration: While systemic change is a long-term endeavour, there are immediate opportunities to enhance demand for African talent by supporting individual companies in their market expansion. In collaboration with OostNL, the regional development agency of Eastern Netherlands, the Jobtech Alliance is helping the Kenyan digital work agency iTalanta establish a commercial office in the Netherlands to expand its reach into the Dutch and broader EU market. If this pilot proves successful, we will explore the possibility of creating a regional outsourcing hub for African digital work agencies. If that model is successful, it could be replicated by actors in other global north markets.

Growing Interest and Collaboration in the Space: The African continent has experienced over a decade of investment in ICT talent development, yet there remains a significant gap in connecting this talent to global markets. We are currently participating in a collaborative working group (currently code-named Xaba), which includes organisations such as the Aspen Institute, Genesis Analytics, and Shortlist, among others. This initiative seeks to address global demand for African talent. As part of this collaborative effort, we are building a directory of African digital work providers to promote their services in global markets. Additionally, we will be conducting pilots to determine which strategies are most effective in increasing demand for these platforms. We will continue to share our findings from this group as they emerge.

Collaborate for Change

Systemic change often requires time, particularly when it involves shifting perceptions of talent across an entire continent. However, India established itself as the world’s outsourcing hub over decades, and the Philippines achieved similar success in a much shorter timeframe. Given Africa’s demographic advantages in the coming decades, we believe there is a compelling case to begin this transformation without delay.

We invite others who are operating in this space to get involved. Our overarching approach remains simple: ‘Get everyone in. Do the work together’. We also urge funders to prioritise supporting commercial efforts aimed at expanding demand for African talent, rather than solely funding training programmes, or there will be insufficient opportunities for the talent to be deployed. With continued efforts to enhance the global perception of African talent and establish direct commercial links between global firms and African providers, we hope to create a more conducive environment for platforms like Digi and others to create sustainable businesses that generate high-quality jobs for African workers.

The author is the Program Director for Mercy Corps at the Jobtech Alliance