Kenya announces it's World's next outsourcing hub:Then violence breaks out

Publié le 31 décembre 2007 par hort

World's next outsourcing hub: Kenya?

By Rob Crilly
Fri Dec 21, 2007

The six clocks on the wall track time zones from the US Pacific seaboard, through the Midwest and across the Atlantic to Britain. Twenty or so computers sit idle, headsets resting on mouse pads waiting for the next shift of call center workers.It could be a phone bank anywhere in the world but for the clock on the far right labeled "Kenya." "People say to me, 'Wow, this is happening in Kenya? We only think of you for athletics and wildlife,' " says Gilda Odera, managing director of Skyweb-Evans in the heart of the capital, Nairobi. "But people are getting really interested in us."

Her call center and a dozen others are seeds of an industry that the government hopes will put the East African country on equal terms with India as an outsourcing destination.The government is pumping millions of dollars into improving the country's outdated telecom system in an effort to capitalize on Kenya's large pool of English-speaking graduates. Eventually it wants Kenya to be as well-known for its call centers as its lions, tea, and coffee. But for now, companies like Skyweb-Evans are limited by shoddy infrastructure and ferociously expensive internet connections.

Ms. Odera employs more than 40 people in two shifts. They mostly dial Canada to collect market research and polling data, but she says it can be a struggle to break even."Sometimes we have clients that need more than 20 seats but, because we haven't been able to ramp up, we haven't been able to take the work, even though it was attractive work," says Odera That is all about to change. In February, her company will open a 75-seat call center, expanding capacity more than threefold.

New fiber-optic cable

Last week, the Kenyan government signed an agreement with French-US telecom group Alcatel-Lucent for a fiber-optic cable linking the Kenyan port of Mombasa with the United Arab Emirates.More important, it will connect East Africa to the rest of the world's Internet capacity and replace the slow and costly satellite links that act as a brake on the country's fast developing industry in business process outsourcing (BPO). At the signing, Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary at the Ministry of Information and Communications, said the connection would allow more ordinary Kenyans to surf the Internet. But the real driving force behind the deal, he said, was the potential for creating jobs in call centers and the rest of the outsourcing industry.

Two other cables are also being planned.

The much delayed East Africa Submarine Cable System will eventually run along the Indian Ocean coastline, connecting 10 African cities with India and Europe. And a third will run from Europe to South Africa. Ndemo said the cost will continue to come down as Kenya becomes a hub for East Africa, selling bandwidth to neighbors such as Tanzania, Uganda, and Sudan. Mark Kobayashi-Hillary, off-shoring director of Britain's National Outsourcing Association, says Kenya is putting itself in a strong position. "In Kenya – and the East African region – they have quite a good recent history of democracy, so it is a stable region and there are lots of well-educated people," he said. "That's a good start, but what they don't have is the infrastructure and I guess that's the importance of this fiber-optics deal."

A promising futureResearch by the London-based business analysis group Datamonitor supports the optimistic outlook. In a report published last year, the group forecast that Africa would see the fastest growth in the number of call centers for the rest of the decade, and singled out Egypt, Botswana, Ghana, and Kenya for particularly rapid expansion. Egypt already has a booming outsourcing industry with many Western companies operating there. Meanwhile, Botswana, Ghana, and Kenya – all former British colonies – have the sort of linguistic skills and education systems that make them well placed for call centers, according to the report.

And signs of a shift in the global pattern emerged earlier this year as several Indian companies began looking to outsource their own outsourcing operations, as rising wages and crumbling infrastructure took their toll. Across town from Skyweb-Evans, Kencall is the posterboy for Kenya's outsourcing industry. Kencall employs 500 people in a converted avocado warehouse on an industrial estate close to Nairobi's international airport. Nicholas Nesbitt, its chief executive, says there is a ready pool of investors looking to enter the Kenyan industry, particularly from South Africa where labor costs are much higher. "We've had a good three or four very big international call center companies coming through Kenya and kicking the tires," he says. "As long as we can keep the drumbeat of Kenya as a good and positive place to invest, then when the time comes people will move in."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,331920260-111242,00.html

Kenya on the brink as more than 100 killed in poll riots

Disputed election result sparks worst violence in 25 years

Xan Rice in Nairobi
Tuesday January 1, 2008

Guardian

Kenya's reputation as one of Africa's most stable democracies was shattered yesterday as the fallout from Sunday's highly controversial presidential elections led to nationwide rioting and the deaths of more than 100 people. Police and protesters fought running battles in a number of Nairobi's slums as supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga burned down homes and looted shops owned by supporters of the victorious incumbent Mwai Kibaki.

In western Kenya, where Odinga's support is greatest, 40 people were reported to have been killed, many of them by police, and a day-time curfew was enforced. The government enforced a nationwide media blackout and civil society groups said there was "an undeclared state of emergency" in the country. British citizens were advised by the Foreign Office to stay indoors.

Tens of thousands of security officers were deployed in the main towns to try to quell the increasing fury at an election result about which Britain, the US, Canada as well as the EU observer mission have expressed concern. Several members of the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), who awarded Kibaki victory, also appeared to have second thoughts yesterday. But Kibaki, 76, who had trailed in all the pre-election opinion polls as well as the media counts from Thursday's ballot, yesterday remained defiant, vowing to quickly end what is the worst violence in Kenya in 25 years. "My government will ... deal decisively with those who breach the peace by intensifying security across the country," he said.

Internal security minister John Muchuki, one of Kibaki's oldest allies, has banned live television and radio broadcasts, drawing strong condemnation from media groups. Odinga, 62, who spent eight years in jail as a political prisoner, said he refused to be intimidated, despite the persistent rumours that he and other top members of the opposition would soon be arrested. After police blocked a planned alternative swearing-in yesterday for "the people's president" - using water cannon and teargas to barricade protesters in the capital's slums - Odinga called for peaceful mass action, culminating in a 1 million-person rally in Nairobi on Thursday. After declaring himself "the elected president of the Republic of Kenya", he told a press conference that the previous 48 hours had been some of the darkest in the country's history. "Kenyans are in a state of mourning. They have seen their nascent democracy shackled, strangled and finally killed," he said.

Western diplomats, concerned at the rapid downturn in one of the few politically stable and democratic countries in the region, were yesterday desperately trying to get hold of Kibaki, who was hastily inaugurated after being given 4.6 million votes to Odinga's 4.4 million on Sunday. But they had little success, with the president and his cabal of Kikuyu advisers dismissing allegations that large-scale rigging occurred during vote-tallying. While the election day went smoothly, many of the results announced by the ECK, which included several members recently appointed by Kibaki, did not agree with those released at the counting centres in the 210 constituencies. Despite loud protests by the opposition leaders during the announcement of the final results - leading to the storming of the election headquarters by the elite GSU police unit and the ejection of observers and media - commission officials ruled that Odinga would have to seek redress via the courts.

EU monitors expressed doubts about the tallying process, noting suspiciously high turnout figures in Kibaki strongholds; they are expected to announce today that the poll was not free and fair. Britain, which is Kenya's largest bilateral donor, has voiced similar concerns. After initially congratulating Kibaki on his victory, the US State Department said yesterday that there were some "real problems" about "irregularities in the vote count". The Kenya Domestic Observation Forum, which deployed 17,000 observers around the country, also qualified their report. "Tallying of votes ... undermined the integrity of the election and therefore it was not legitimate," it said.

Four members of the electoral commission appeared to be reconsidering their decision, saying in a statement that "some of the information received from some of our returning officers now casts doubt on the veracity of the figures". Jack Tumwa, one of the commissioners, said: "We are going to recommend to our colleagues at the ECK that a proper judicial process be started." Kibaki's PNU party, which was trounced by the opposition Orange Democratic Movement in the parallel parliamentary election, has rejected the claims of vote- rigging, instead accusing Odinga of trying to manipulate the results. In Central Province yesterday, where Kibaki achieved 97% of the vote, helping him win the overall count despite losing in six out of eight provinces, residents piled into local bars to celebrate.

Across the rest of the country there was anger and fear. The chaos has caused shortages of fuel, water and food, particularly in the slums, where people's movements have been restricted and shops remain closed. Tourism, Kenya's biggest foreign exchange earner, is expected to be severely hit at the height of peak season. The Foreign Office yesterday warned against all but essential travel to several towns in western Kenya and parts of Nairobi and Mombasa.