Slashdot Mirror
Africa Enters Global Market For IT Outsourcing
nusratt writes "MarketWatch reports that many organizations 'are moving away from India as the place to outsource, because of the labor churn, and Africa supplies the highest rate of return on investments. New York's parking ticket system is managed from Ghana, Nigeria has an entire ministry for ICT, and Mauritius is building its own CyberCity. Gartner predicts that up to 25 percent of IT jobs today will be moved to emerging markets by 2010'."
Would you trust any sensitive customer data in Nigeria? Im not being racist, just that they dont exactly have a glowing track record.
Oh yes this is the country you want to trust for your outsourcing needs. "Thank you for calling Dell,.... Well sir I think I know how we can fix your computer problem, you see my uncle Prince Zambar the great had $434,000,000 (FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY FOUR BILLION DOLLARS) yadda yadda yadda."
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
And as it so happens the Nigerian ministry of ICT has developed a product for the US Department of Homeland Security. Problem is, that the DHS can only contract out to a US based company or individual. Seeing as this contract is worth 480 MILLION DOLLARS, they will be glad to give you 10% of that, if you were to act as an intermediary.. There are just a feeeew formalities to be handled, like, oh, a Nigerian ICT business license, and this thing called a Remmitance Fee. Honest truth. They e-mailed me about it just yesterday.
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Nigeria is like the internet scam capital of the world they lack the legal infrastructure to be a trustworthy place to do business.
Thats not to say they couldnt turn it around...but its going to take a lot of work.
Whatever about the labour markets in India and China, the real reason for this move is too keep wages, everywhere, down. If the Indian or Chinese programmers start asking for an extra 50 cent an hour, move it to Africa. And hey! There's still South America and Latin America id things go wrong there too!
I know outsourcing is supossed to bring everyone up to the same level, but what happens if a cycle emerges, whereby companies just pick a region on a decade by decade basis, keeping wages down permenatntly! They'd like too you know. But that's worst case senario
Best case, years of outsourceing leads to an equalisation of wages globally. Lets just hope those wages are the level we're used to and not the level programmers in El Salvador.
May the Maths Be with you!
"Outsourcing says there is also a drive to follow the sun, to allow them to offer services 24/7 (24 hours, seven days a week)."
For such a buzzword driven article, they have to explain 24/7? Damn.
I think I need a new sig here.
Would this potential bigger fish (outsourcing) forces Nigerian government to take a good look at actually stopping spams and scams coming out of their country?
:)
In some Asian countries, Microsoft won't invest unless the government stops software piracy, but that drives some to OSS though
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
It's not super in depth, but over at cio.com they have interactive maps comparing different parts of the world for outsourcing.
Yeah, i'm glad money is flowing into Nigeria, as i am about to complete a transaction with a Nigerian prince that will settle my money problems for good. I laugh at thee.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
Not sure how the big companies think about oursourcing, for home/small office, it's no doubt a good solution to cut down the cost. Of course, you will take some risks to find the right people in the beginning.
Dear Sir:
I represent a technology company employing thousands of programmers whose founder recently suffered an untimely demise. Without his leadership, these programmers remain without work, and soon will drift away to find other jobs with the government. If I could find an overseas company to employ these programmers, we could avoid the government acquiring these workers and save your company millions of dollars in the process. I propose that you keep 90% of the savings, while 10% goes to me as a finders fee.
There is nothing unethical about this transaction.
We must act now to take advantage of this situation. We will need funds to write a proposal for your signature to complete the outsourcing. Please send me the account numbers for your corporate accounts.
Sincerely,
Prince^H^H^H^H^H^HCIO Mgumbi
Nigeria has an entire ministry for ICT
Fifth floor, third door on the left, next to the Ministry for Snipping, run by Dr Timothy Ognobaki, your previously unknown third cousin, who recently passed away leaving you the sum of $17,000,000...
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Maybe now we can understand the person on the other side of the phone
Yes, capitalism _will_ solve hunger in Africa.
(And cut the 419 jokes, already. Christ, so obvious)
he problem with outsourcing education-intensive jobs to places like Africa and India is that the AIDS plague makes it too hard to maintain an educated workforce, since the high death rate among adults leaves too many orphaned children.
Thus it is in Islamic countries like Ghana and Nigeria, where religious beliefs have kept the spread of AIDS at bay, that we see companies being willing to outsource work. In this day and age, when the "clash of civilizations" threatens to plunge the world into total war, it is ironic that muslim and secular societies have come together through, of all things, job outsourcing.
Churn in India may be a problem, but AIDS is a pretty big problem in Africa - which unfortunately will affect churn as well. A few stats on AIDS in Africa:
* 5.4 million new AIDS infections in 1999, 4 million of them in Africa.
* 2.8 million dead of AIDS in 1999, 85 percent of them in Africa.
* 13.2 million children orphaned by AIDS, 12.1 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
* Reduced life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa from 59 years to 45 between 2005 and 2010, and in Zimbabwe from 61 to 33.
* More than 500,000 babies infected in 1999 by their mothers -- most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Considering the scope of the problem, the chances of locating anything but no-brainer jobs there is pretty slim. I can't see anyone betting on long-term (and skilled) career employees there. Bad for low-level jobs, but the loss of high-paying jobs seems pretty remote.
Really now. India and Taiwan I can imagine as good sources for cheap labour. Stable and growing economies backed by a stable enough political systems. Now about most of Africa then? Only the countries at the northern most end and the southern most end ( Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and South-Africa. ) are anywhere near stable. The countries in the middle are plagued by atrocious economies that can't support anything, absolute lack of anything after YEARS of prolonged warfare and famine, no political stability whatsoever and plenty of tribal conflicts to boot.
I would think twice of investing resources in a country where the next day you might have to deal with 50k refugees from your neighbor camping on your grounds, the local fundamentalist warlord taking over control of the country and/or a tribal warfare because you've employed someone from tribe Z which pissed of tribes A to Y.
Hate me!
El Salvador is located in Central America, not South America.
FYI The the nation that produces the most spam is the Good Ole USA. Just because this scam is popular in Nigera dosn't mean that most nigerian's are scam artists. A couple of months ago over 500 scammers were arrested. Of course slashdot decided not to publish the story.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
With much sincerity of purpose we make this contact with you after satisfactory information we gathered from the Chamber of Commerce here in Nigeria though we did not disclose the nature of the transaction to them, believing that you will provide us a feasible solution to job/services rendered for the Nigerian National Software Developers Association [NNSDA] by Foreign Companies. Although it might be a surprise to you, it is my sincere pleasure to intimate you with this confidential business proposal, which will certainly benefit all of us involved.
I am a senior software developer with the Nigerian National Software Developers Association Headquarters, Lagos. I have decided with some colleagues in the Central Bank of Nigeria [CBN] and The Federal Ministry of Finance to contact you secretly on this business for the arrangement of transferring 37.5M [Thirty Seven Million Five Hundred Thousand] jobs to our country.
However, concrete arrangement has been made to remit the jobs successfully to our country.
Being Government officials, we are prevented by the Law from screwing fat lazy Americans out of jobs while still in the Government service, hence the need for your assistance.
Please, let me know your position by fax through my Tel/fax number above as soon as this gets to you also include your direct Tel/fax number and e-mail address for easy communication. Details are reserved until we hear from you.
Yours Sincerely,
DR. JAMES EJIKE
because what hunting rifle has a bayonet lug
If more people spelled it out, we'd see less nonsense like 24/7/365 ("24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 weeks a ... waitaminnit!") :)
I'm working on a very efficient business model that I will implement very shortly... it goes as follows:
Good Day Sir,
My name is John Smith, I am a district manager at the New York Bank of Commerce (NYBC) and I am contacing you to obtain your help in an urgent matter.
Several weeks ago, Prince Adhi-Butta Gambei, passed away in a plane accident on the coast of Los Angeles, leaving in our safe a fortune estimated to no less than 2,600,000,000 nairas. Yes, that is 2 Billion, six hundred thousand nairas (approximately USD $20,000,000 or Twenty Million US Dollars).
With your help, I believe I may have an opportuny to move these funds to a separate account before my government can take possession of these funds but I need the help of someone familiar with the nigerian political system and I will provide you with detailed instructions that will help you pretend that you are the legitimate heir of Prince Adhi-Butta Gambei.
Once the funds are transfered in your NYBC account, I will move these funds immediately to an off-short account, leaving in your NYBC 30% of the amount. That is 78,000,000 nairas... YES!! Seventy Eight Million nairas (or USD $600,000).
However, openning an account at NYBC will require a minimum balance of USD $14,000 (1,820,140 nairas).
I was able to place $6,000 of my personal funds in this account, however I require your help in providing the remaining $8,000 (1,040,080 nairas) in order to reach our goal.
Best Regards,
John Smith
Seriously, if the labour is as skilled, what's the justification for keeping the labour in the 1st world? Moral crusading on the idea that this would only be justified if the outsourced workers were paid an identical wage falls flat on its face; "victims" of outsourcing would be identically as pissed as they are now as they're having wages undercut. We're going to have to admit sooner or later that your average African or Indian brain can process the simplicity of IT work as well as your average Euro-American IT worker. If you ask me, offshore workers still have a very large hurdle to jump in order to become as useful in processing IT labour: predominant mastery of major lingua francas.
DEAR SIR/MADAM...
:D
Oh, the rest of Slashdot already beat me to it. Never mind.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
As an African I know that his is one prediction that is not going to become reality.
There's a few places in Africa worth the trouble.
In the south, only South-Africa and only if the government can control itself and not become like the rest of Africa.
In the middle, maybe Ghana.
Up north, maybe some of the Arab countries.
I read an interesting article the other day. This article was describing Canada as a great place for the U.S. to outsource its jobs, because:
...
1. same time zone
2. same language
3. similar work ethics and culture
4. lower wages
5. highly educated
6. geographically closer
Makes sense, eh?
Simpy
hurriedly pasted text (before we start getting the: bandwidth exhausted for the next millennium message)
By ECT News Syndication Desk 07/18/04 5:49 PM PT
There are many areas in which African countries, eager to move into this space, can carve out a niche for themselves. The lucrative call center sector is one such area. Creating an environment that makes offshore outsourcing in Africa attractive can have many positive spin-offs for the continent as a whole, not just in terms of increased employment, additional revenue and new skills, but also in terms of changing the perception the developed world has about Africa.
With the rising cost of local production and labor in developed countries like the United States, many companies, especially in the IT arena are looking to the developed world for answers -- and finding them. Countries like India have successfully positioned themselves as niche providers of outsourced labor in IT and are reaping the benefits. And, as analysts continue to predict a growth in this type of outsourcing, the opportunity is ripe for other developing countries to tap into this lucrative market. The question is: Can Africa capture a share of the offshore IT market?
US research firm Gartner Ine is predicting that the outsourcing segment will continue to outperform the western European IT services market overall, growing by 3.1 percent in 2004, then rising steadily during the next three years to an annual increase of 8 percent in 2007. Moreover, as a result of global outsourcing trends, Gartner predicts that up to 25 percent of traditional IT jobs in many developed countries today will be situated in emerging markets by 2010. The move to offshore outsourcing is spurred on by increasing pressure on companies in the developed world to generate profits and reduce costs. Anton Groom of MBS Outsourcing says there is also a drive to follow the sun, to allow them to offer services 24/7 (24 hours, seven days a week). "It therefore makes sense to have offices located in the three primary time zones," says Groom.
He adds that with a client base expanding globally, it also makes sense to provide clients with a global delivery model. As the developing world gains momentum in creating pools of qualified, skilled talent, outsourcing to these regions becomes more attractive.
Following India's Lead
India has managed to create a niche for itself in this area, but it has not happened overnight. Amar Vakil, CEO of Lintas, a US-based management-consulting firm, and founder of the Foreign Investment Promotion Council, explains that there are specific factors that have enabled India to position itself in such a manner. These factors are predominantly a skilled workforce and appropriate infrastructure.
"Twenty to 25 years ago, India was an underdeveloped country. There was a brain drain of skilled labor to developed countries, where, for example there was a need for engineers," says Vakil. "Ten to 15 years ago, people like me, with similar backgrounds, decided to move back to India and there was a huge impetus from government to build world class communications networks. Government started dabbling with public-private partnerships, which now, after 10 or so years are proving very effective."
While this may not be easy to replicate, Vakil believes there are lessons to be learned from India and other countries like the Philippines which have attracted a strong outsource base. "The playing field is level. It is not India's game at all," he says. Although India was one of the first to position itself in this way, "there is an opportunity for other countries to tap into this potential".
Where India focused on information technology and software development, African countries wanting to tap into this opportunity will need to look at IP-enabled services.
Everdream founder and vice-president, Lyndon Rive, agrees that Africa can move into this arena. "Third world countries are getting educated enough to offer IT
i live on an alternate planet
Eventually, the IT industry will be spread evenly across the entire globe. We're like plumbers. Everyone needs a plumber and everyone needs PC techs, IT managers, et cetera. I'm sure the plumbing industry started out in a few locales and plumbers got pissed when their company decided to hire plumbers and train plumbers in Africa instead of sending the plumbers back at home to do the job.
What is your penile percentile?
Now THAT is insightful.
In this tested and failed system, multinational corporations no longer need to pay training costs for their workforce. Governments also compete by subsidizing infrastructure - and sometimes by direct cash subsidies too.
God forbid we actually train Africans in IT so that they could deal solve their own economic challenges.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Wow.. Seriously, the parent post made me say "wow" outloud.
What is your penile percentile?
Oh yes, offshore outsourcing is going to be huge! Oh and by the way, we do have our own offshore outsourcing consullting services!
Not saying they are wrong, but you just gotta wonder if they may have alterior motives....
I read about that "500 scammer arrest" here on slasherdot. Not sure-don't recall- if it was a standalone article or a reference in a subthread though, but defintely it was here.
My bottom line as a past identity theft victim is, I don't trust anyone or anyplace with my info now, although you are forced to provide it in some cases. I now use cash as much as possible, don't have an ebay or paypal, etc, account,never use them, don't pay any bills online, and tend to use postal money orders a lot for buying things "remotely", and even then, only if it's impossible to find or order what I want locally in a brick and mortar store. Yes, it's limiting, but still doable in our society, but it gets increasingly hard to do. It seems every business out there wants all your info, and nowadays every other website wants your info just to look at the website. Screw it. I love the *theory* of the internet, and I use it up to what my personal-choice limits will allow now, but the *practice* of the internet as regards any sort of rational "security" is a 50/50 crapshoot near as I can see as soon as "money" is involved in any manner. If your software isn't insecure, then the humans at the other end might be insecure.
Reasons why India is better to Invest:
,Mumbai Hyderabad ,Chennai there are other cities like pune,Ahmedabad , Coimbatore ,Mysore coming up big time to meet up the standards.upLittle towns have already become better.Villages are improving etc.Looks like workforce is improving
.Anyone who can bring big bucks to the family is hailed and treated like a hero.So English workforce is improving tremendously.India has 18 official languages.Jus imagine if People in US speak so many languages.Languages come with diverse culture,customs etc.And English is undoubtedly the uniting factor among diverse Indians.All Work is documented in English becuz most of them dont know many regional languages.
1.Upcoming Youth workForce:
I would like to remind everyone, that 50% of indian population is below 25 years of age and only 54% of popuation are literate.Slowly this is improving , people are imbibing english into their lifestyle more.After Bangalore, New Delhi
2.Upcoming alternative IT workforce:
Already there are overwhelming amount of indians whose undergrad major is mechanical or electrical or some other non comp-sci degree but still they are seduced for quick bucks in IT.Honestly if u have good aptitudde and some basics of programming, one can sustain in IT field with hardwork.I was thus saying there is an upcoming workforce there.
3.upcoming Quality English Workforce:
Importance of english is overstressed in schools.Indians watch a whole lot of English movies , listen to Music and its almost a status symbol if you are good with english.And besides , Nerds are the heroes in India.You would watch Indian heroes in movies are projected to have a strong academic background
4.Content with Salary
:
Most of the people with non comp sci majors who work in other areas earn half as comp sci workers.And if an IT employee asks for more money , that reform would not be easy cuz there are so many talented Indians wthout jobs stalking streets day and night to bring themselves and their families to a decent existence.Btw , The salaries provided to many IT people are very high already.They enjoy superior life style.The point is "Salary increase is minimal and would not be a burden to investros".So in the long run, they are stable and cheap.
I would still invest in India , cuz
1.Abundant and still latent talented English speaking IT workforce
2.Upcoming Quality of workforce
3.Democracy and approachable govt policies.
4.Already Established.
5.Investment cost is low and not likely to grow higher and would propagate to different unexplored places.
Sorry for the long Article , couldnt condense..
Hello , this is my way.
Which way is yours ?
btw there is no right way
The US standard of living is based on cosuming 60%of the worlds resources. So there is a problem bringing everybody up to that level.
and this is what they had to say
As a bit of background, I worked around people from all over the world at my last job (which I held for 4 years while I was in college). In addition to the students and staff employees from Africa that I got to know there, i knew several from on campus as well as my time in other locations.
As far as their English is concerend, a lot of them did pretty well (The ones from Egypt especially. Some of them could be mistaken for natives on the phone without any trouble). Some of them, however, were difficult to understand and one or two of them nearly impossible (they talked far too fast and ran half of their words together).
Overall, however, language wasn't much of a barrier. The thing to remember is that it depends not only on the person speaking but also on the person listening. People who are used to a wide variety of accents and manners of speech will usually have an easier time understanding forigen speakers.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
...all these outsourcing companies run out of newer, cheaper places to go? Asia, Africa, South America - all these places, as they climb the economic ladder, will eventually not be the cheapest place to outsource labour to.
I wonder what sort of economic adjustments will happen when price isn't such a huge consideration in the provision of IT services?
Whatever about the labour markets in India and China, the real reason for this move is too keep wages, everywhere, down. If the Indian or Chinese programmers start asking for an extra 50 cent an hour, move it to Africa. And hey! There's still South America and Latin America id things go wrong there too!
I think that South America is already quite expensive for that alreay... Perhaps Central America instead.
What about the genocide in Darfur. Is that a extremely low scale war? If it is, what the fuck do you consider a large scale war, the use of asteroids to destroy planets?
Core business functions like customer support, coding, design, and manufacturing are leaving North America?
Admittedly I am a tin-foil hatter by nature, but its scary to me that corporations are throwing work en masse over the borders seemingly without concern for long term impact (loss of core competency in the North American organizations) or strategic risks (war, etc).
At what point to we say to ourselves, "shit, we just sold the farm but we still need to plant crops(!)"
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/rep ort/1985/WJ.htm
Hate me!
After all this galashing about African countries, could'nt, sit back and relax. Yes some of Nigerian are bad people(I'm a South african though :-). Lots of them leave here. And I remember a day they were protesting in front of Cape Town magistrate's court saying "We're not bad people" and opposing bail to other fellow Nigerians "We are opposing bail for them, because they are giving us a bad name. We want the courts to give them maximum sentences."
So what can I say.
THERE ARE BAD ALL OVER AND THE WORLD IS TIED OF THEM, /.(Companies must think twice and outsource to South Africa) :-)/****and our gorvement is moving slowly to OSS**/
We have talented programmers and beautiful chicks! Come down to Brazil!
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
If Gartner says it, It MUST BE TRUE (tm). Clowns.
The essence if stupidity is this - the more we "compete" with third world countries, the more we as a nation are going to lose. Third world countries don't have our living standards, our infrastructure, or many other opportunities we have worked for for so many years. They don't require benefits, which thanks to our broken healthcare industry (read insurance racket) eat up huge portions of company dollars. They don't require fair living wages, benefits, any kind of job security. So how do we compete globally? Do we push our standards into the toilet in order to accomodate corporate greed and government corruption?
We have two options - force our standard of living down to the early 1900s level in order to "compete" (what we are doing now), or have a US-based revolution that redefines America as a self-sustaining entity - reliance on our own farmers, manufacturing industry, service sectors, etc. In this mode, we refuse to give up the quality of life we have built for ourselves, and start requiring other countries to come to our level playing field if they wish to participate.
What amazes me is that with America's huge installed base of great programming and IT knowledge, there is no influx of jobs coming from the other direction.
Are we SO overpaid that our economy must first experience a massive depression in skills, education and fair wages in order to "compete" (artificially) with the rest of the world? Do other countries' people actually believe that somehow they won't experience the same problems and that they will all become rich and famous; their management won't outsource back to America if the wages are cheaper?
Say what you will about Unions, but my friends, America's Corporate Greed is ready and willing to exploit you, and teach your management the tricks of the trade. If you think we're overpaid over here, then check our statistics on labor at the department of labor and statistics url:BLS. Note that union workers on average get a few $ more per hour than non-union. And yet, people still believe they are evil. This is typical claptrap from businesses that don't wish to impact their profit margins in order to "compete". How soon we forget the awful abuse our parents and grandparents experienced at the hands of large business - and the need that created unions in the first place - it hasn't even been a hundred years.
Remember that everything over here costs a LOT MORE than in India or other countries, even if the vast majority of crap (and I do mean CRAP) we buy comes from China (hello, WalMart).
So, anyone care to speculate where the bottom is, and when we'll reach it?
I remember debating some Indian IT'ers who said things such as, "But if we can do it cheaper, we have the right to the job."
I then said something like, "But what if say Etheopians came along and could do it for 30 cents an hour instead of your $2.00, putting you on the street?"
They dismissed the idea and thought I was joking.
Either way, brains are becoming a cheap commodity. The closer you stay toward marketing and dealing with customer whims the safer your career. The world is cranking out low-cost Phd's just like any other high-volume factory. One can learn J2EE even if they live in a tent and eat flies.
Table-ized A.I.
Can't blame them for outsourcing. But corpoartions are exporting their expenses to cheeper locations and then turning around and charging us the same prices we would pay for stuff made here. While this is probably a good thing in that it keeps any competing companies from having to outsource to just to compete. But really its just keeping prices artificially high. If the savings from outsourcing were passed on to consumers rather than company execs, salaries here could drop some while we keep the same standard of living. Hopefully stopping the need for companies to outsource to be competitive. (Of course i probably dont know what i'm talking about =) )
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I read the news.
How possible is it to tax US companies that outsource its labor and provide subsidies to those who hire an all american work force?
I mean yeah it sucks that those countries are in situation where american corporations feel it's less expensive to exploit their people but its just starting to get silly.
A couple of weeks ago I visited my grandmother in North Carolina and fixed her computer. She started telling me horror stories about talking to "Bob" on gateway tech support. The funny thing about it is that one of my grandmother's good friends is from India. So when she couldn't understand "Bob" she put her friend on and the first thing out of her mouth was "So what part of India are you from?".
The support they provide is crap due to the language barriers and cost cutting meausures of the american companies. How long can this go on before american citizens step up and say "Hey if you're going to have people help us with your products make them american"?
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
So, fellow whiners and moaners, where do we find who's outsourcing and who isn't? I've looked a bit on the web and most of the sites seem to be done by 14 year olds with complaints about only one or two companies. Is there a real orginization that combats outsourcing?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
At this rate, if the outsourcing trend is just going to keep heading to the cheapest and least developed countries and territories, you have to wonder where it'll end! Next thing you know, the penguins in antarctica will be running the show!
Hey... maybe tux can pick up a few contracts. "Microsoft support, tux speaking!"
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
I know outsourcing is supossed to bring everyone up to the same level, but what happens if a cycle emerges, whereby companies just pick a region on a decade by decade basis, keeping wages down permenatntly! They'd like too you know. But that's worst case senario.
Or - the people could start their own companies, and stick it to the man.
What is it with this defeatist attitude around here? If you hate your job, then quit, and start your own company! BE YOUR OWN BOSS!!! Reap your own dividends!
Liberty. What an antiquated, 18th century absurdity...
The other interesting thing is that ACS had a processing center in Mexico, and is moving it to Fiji. ACS chooses countries based on political stability, english language skills, and low labor costs. So either: Mexico's government has become unstable (doubt it), the english speaking labor has lost its ability to speak english (doubt it), or ... labor in Mexico priced itself out of the market.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
Plumbers don't have to worry about hordes of cheap Indian plumbers remotely doing their job while not incurring the cost of living associated with the area receiving the product of work.l y&threshold=2&commentsort=0&tid=126&mode=nested&pi d=9797142
l y&threshold=2&commentsort=0&tid=126&mode=nested&pi d=9796933
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115681&op=Rep
Menace of turning knowledge into bits.
Reasons why India is better to Invest:
1.Abundant and still latent talented English speaking IT workforce
2.Upcoming Quality of workforce
3.Democracy and approachable govt policies.
4.Already Established.
5.Investment cost is low and not likely to grow higher and would propagate to different unexplored places.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115681&op=Rep
Democracy and free press. I should underline these.
Please be sure of your facts before you post, and try to avoid statements that are foolish, offensive, and wrong.
Firsly, Ghana is not an Islamic country in any sense -- 63 percent of the population is Christian.
While half of the Nigerian population is Muslim, it is not an Islamic country. Would you call Canada a Roman Catholic country? Unfortunately, there are a lot of sectarian tensions in Nigeria that sometimes result in violence. But it is not an Islamic state.
Secondly, there is very little reason to believe that religious beliefs and AIDS are somehow corelated. Just look at some statistics from west African countries:
Country / % Christian / % Muslim / Adult AIDS prevalence rate
Ghana / 63 / 16 / 3% (2001)
Nigeria / 40 / 50 / 5.8% (2001)
Niger / 20 / 80 / 4% (2001)
Chad / 35 / 51 / 5-7% (2001)
Benin / 30 / 20 / 3.6% (2001)
Cote d'Ivoire / 20-30 / 35-40 / 9.7% (2001)
Togo / 29 / 20 / 6% (2001)
--source: CIA World Factbook
Outsourced IT work is a great economic opportunity for African countries. They continue to be shafted on agriculture through US and EU farm subsidies, and on natural resources through international conglomerates, kleptocratic governments, and war profiteers.
Things like call centers and support centers don't cost much to set up, bring money to local economies, and provide jobs for skilled workers, giving a boost to education systems.
This will also create local markets for IT goods and services, creating a positive feedback loop -- as more people learn the trade, more people demand products and services the trade offers.
How long before we see a cheap, solar-powered PC running an African-brewed Linux?
Seriously, Africa needs this. India may be overcrowded but they have more graduate degrees than the entire US workforce and even the poorer folks are generally pretty civil. Africa on the other hand is one of the few places where a few hundred thousand people can be slaughtered and not get any attention in the news. There are many countries that are horribly poor. In the long run that hurts everyone. The key to battling this sort of problem is education. The smarter the kids are the less likely they will fall victim to AIDS participate in gang violence, kill Rhino's etc.
India?
At current textbook prices (over $100/book) ...
Strictly speaking, no, China isn't going anywhere, except in terms of asiatic continental drift. However your comment about someone "taking a sledgehammer to their structure" is both valid,and more importantly, my point. China has risk factors associated with long term investment that are a great deal more subtle than elsewhere, precisely because it is China. I'd be reluctant to call it a "decrepit communist regime", because that description just seems to miss the mark with the weird sort of pseudo-reformed Maoist government in place right now.
On riots being unheard of, that's true. Of course that decrepit communist regime controls the media there, but I suppose that's one of the bad points you're speaking of.
Seriously, If I had a project of any size to run right now, China would be on my list of possible resources, along with several other global locations. However, since my background isn't cost accounting and I hate MBA-think, my definition of "value" includes a little more than dollar cost. It would be an interesting exercise.
Two side notes:
I've worked for two big US companies that have outsourced to the US- one told us never to say we were in Canada, the other just leaves it to your discretion, but usually people will lie.
The US has been outsourcing to Canada for a long time.
Sure it's better to keep all investment out of Africa. This way, you'll keep jobs not only in the IT, but also in the government and the military, both required for various relief and/or stabilisation missions.
How is it that Americans willingly shelve out billions of dollars for 'War on terror' when it is done with bombs and rockets, and just can't get it that direct investment in 3rd world countries helps bring them out of poverty and lowers the supply of young angry men with nothing better to do than smash themselves agains a US NAVY cruiser or a NY scyscraper?
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Many of you may have seen last Monday's NYT article reproduced here where orders at Missouri fast food restaurants are sent to a call center in Colorado, a whole time zone away from the drive-through. Do the math. No one is safe now.
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
Nigeria's ICT and the 419er's will form a
/ / ...
...
...
perfect business intelligence feedback loop.
The information gleened from their new "credit
bureau help desk(s) and the 419 scammers will
make all currently known "directed scam"
operations into an art form.
I can't wait for the email offers to begin
rolling in. I know they will be utterly
irresistible (easy credit / low interest
variable APR / new business opportunity
pay off my student loans working from home,
etcetera, etcetera, etcetera
I might just as well put on my tinfoil hat
now, and burn my modem cable
This article has convinced me that we must
be living in the "end of days"
They don't have the most important call center skill: Speaking English in a comprehensible accent
Who are the real victims of offshoring to third world countries?
My poor mom called me yesterday with a weary voice almost crying. She had been on the phone with EarthLink's tech support for hours over two days. "I can't understand these Indians!" She didn't know what they were telling her, and to make matters more frustrating, the techs were bound to their stupid, written routines, repeating the same rigamaroll over and over as she got shuffled around through the phone maze. I think she fudged the connection profile I had created for her while trying to follow their instructions. It's a wonder she didn't end up doing worse to her computer.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You care to prove that statement?
What data do you base that on?
Certain people and organizations with certain political agendas are always throwing around
Certain people and organizations with certain political agendas are always throwing around statistics- ('Why every day X number of children starve to death in this country and I blame the vast right wing conspiracy!!')- That go unsourced and nobody in the lazy media questions the veracity of.
If you go around making such broad statements, you should be prepared to back it with credible data!
Money is not an end. It is a means to an end.
My own view is that short-term profit is NEVER as important as long-term survival. So many companies and so many people, though, rarely look beyond the next quarter's profits.
Until that attitude changes WORLDWIDE -- until money itself is seen merely as the tool that it is, not as some sort of object of worship -- I think we'll continue to see this sort of insanity in terms of hemorrhaging jobs overseas.
I fully expect that such a radical view will get moderated down as 'flamebait' or 'troll' or something similar. So be it. No amount of Slashdot moderation will change the truth.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Whence does the "right" of these idle class heirs to the wealth created by workers come from? Well, robber baron George Baer talked about the divine right of capital a century ago, but in actual practice, it is easy enough to see by what means the rentier expropriates for himself if one observes what happens to tenants who does not pay their landlord, or workers who refuse to let capital-owners expropriate profit (like at Argentina's Brukman factory).
>Gartner predicts that up to 25 percent of IT jobs today will be moved to emerging markets by 2010
The problem with emerging markets is that they don't remain 'emerging'.
n% of tech jobs will have moved to Africa by 2010.
n-1% of tech jobs will have moved to (oh, let's say..) central america by 2011
Mod the man up. This issue is really important.
Every consultancy that is making up figures about how efficient it is to move all your development miles and miles away from your customers is set to benifit enourmously. No consideration is given to losing expertise or the difficulties of people not being able to meet face to face or the difficulties of possible legal challenges in countries that do no operate on the same legal system.
An old manager of mine had a story on outsourcing, he met a guy who said he could do a project for about 1/3 of what he was expecting. He described how he'd do it with outsourcing. My old manager asked him if he'd done it before, he said yes. My old manager asked how it went, he described it as a disaster with nothing delivered...... But he could deliver nothing really cheaply!
Quite a few huh? I count 2 in this study, which also shows genital warts to be more common in circumcised men:k 1/
http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/STD/coo
I don't know about you, but I prefer the choice of keeping it clean instead of having it cut off without consent.
The point is that American companies had a pipe dream of selling into the emerging Chinese market. Anyone sensible saw right away that it would not happen. China will sell to America - they will not buy from America.
I used to work for a large oil company with a base in Nigeria. A key problem was that people were kidnapped when arriving at the airport.
I'm looking forward to my companys lawyers and VPs getting kidnapped when arriving at Lagos Intl. to negoiate the outsourcing contracts.
Serve them right.
Just two years ago I wrote
about future of African outsource market. It was modded funny...
The fundamental problem is this:
The governments of these African countries, like the government of India before them, are in the process of subsidizing the development of what is perceived to be a cash cow of limitless milkability, IT. This process is nothing more and nothing less than seizing money at gunpoint from other, more productive domestic industry (natural resources development as one example) or getting it from dumber countries (like, say, the US and its billions of dollars of foreign aid, ironically likewise looted from the American taxpayer), and giving it to another industry to make it grow in defiance of market forces. Governments are subsidizing the production of millions of PhDs, handing out favors to "tech-savvy" "entrepreneurs" and foreign companies to take advantage of the perceived riches of the tech industry, not realizing a couple of very basic tenets of economics:
ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, WHEN SUPPLY GOES UP, PROFITS (AND PRICES) GO DOWN.
and
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO CIRCUMVENT MARKET FORCES. USING GOVERNMENT TO FORCE THE ISSUE LOOKS BETTER NOW, BUT COSTS MORE LATER.
The problem is, this is not an endless phenomenon. It wasn't profitable to locate things in India before, for a multitude of reasons (lack of infrastructure, lack of education, social problems, whatever). It will likewise be unprofitable in the future, when their millions of PhDs are hacking cabs in New Delhi to make rent, or becoming farmers. (You can see this process beginning now. The market there has reached capacity, and other places - like Africa, Land of Ceaseless Warfare, Spam, and Disease - are being seriously considered as places to invest in tech, because the market in India is getting too inflated.) It sure as hell has been unprofitable and/or just plain dumb to locate any form of tech industry capital in basically any African country, where the odds of its being nationalized, destroyed, or devalued in the customary and predictable political upheaval are astronomical.
The cornucopia of benefit from IT and tech in general is mostly illusory. It came about in the US largely through a government/Federal Reserve easy-credit policy in the 90s that allowed all manner of idiocy to get funding and look great on paper (AKA the dot-com boom - pets.com, anyone?), followed by the bust when all of these crappy investments based on bullshit were exposed as the stupid ideas that they were. Yes, there is some benefit to tech, as long as it enhances productivity and quality of life. No, its benefit on life and productivity are not infinite, nor is this benefit anywhere near as bountiful as some think. It seems that the governments of other countries, enthralled by the idea of a trillion-dollar business tax base (or "loot pond") springing up overnight with a minimum of effort, are going to go down this same road with precisely the same heartbreak at its end. The citizens of these countries would do better to leave their neighbors alone and spend their time farming and defending their property from invaders. After a few decades of respect of property rights and natural rights have set in, then they could begin working their way up the industrial/informational ladder, and would be in a much better positioin than we are now. (For that matter, we in the US should probably take the same advice.)
Oh well.
I am Chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are Free. -Eris
Outsourcing to Africa. That's great news. I thought it took more time to take outsourcing there.
Next on the list: Cuba and North Korea.
After which this outsourcing madness will - hopefully - stop.
chess
I don't think that's correct. I think you only get executed for drug trafficking. Piracy just results in fines from what I understand...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
If Nigeria becomes home to IT outsourcing, where will Nigeria outsource spam to ?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
And those 500 scam artists who got arrested mostly got let off for "lack of evidence. I suspect the dismissal process was rather along the lines of a 50% cut of the profits from the guilty and a possibly smaller bribe from the unsuccessful scammers.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Subject: Urgent Business Proposition
Dear %s:
My late uncle, Solicitor Frederick M'Bogo, was the lead data processing outsourcing agent for the New York City Department of Transportation Parking Ticket Bureau, which has used Nigerian data services since 2003. After my uncle died of an acute case of lead poisoning, our family discovered that he had acquired $8,765,432 from over-invoicing of New York City parking tickets. Unfortunately, this money is held in a bank account in New York City, and we are unable to repatriate the money to Nigeria directly due to accounting regulations, and we need an American citizen to accept the money. We would like to offer you 20% of the money in exchange for your assistance in this matter.
With kindest regards, Jar-Jar M'Bogo.
P.S. If you're living in New York City but _not_ an American citizen, you won't be able to help with this project, but we'd be happy to offer you a 50% discount on parking tickets.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You're thinking of Guyana. Oh dear. School classrooms really should invest in a map of the world that doesn't stop at the borders of their own state... Of course my first map showed it as being "the gold coast" of west africa, but it's changed a bit since then. They (people from Ghana) like advertising for penpals in UK magazines for some reason.
All too often I hear journalists trying to stir things up by telling people that some guy in a sweatshop earns 50c/hour without describe the relative housing and food costs.
I'm not saying people in these countries are super-rich, but earnings have to be put into context.
Believe it or not, your inflated standard of living is _based_ on reaping the benefits of low cost work in other countries.
America has barely a few percent of the world's population, but consumes more than a half of the world's resources. That's where that standard high of living comes from.
Again, this means relying on low wages in other countries, all the way along the chain.
You get cheap raw materials (e.g., oil) because the people digging/pumping it out in those countries are paid barely enough not to starve. You get cheap shoes, clothes, CPUs, etc, because some people from other countries can be crammed in cheap sweatshops and overworked for ridiculously low wages.
And if you think you can build your own Chinese Wall, and become an isolationist nation, I have news for you. Bad news. Then you _won't_ keep that standard of living.
You may keep your job and your current wage, but suddenly everything will cost at least twice as much. I.e., effectively you've taken one big wage cut anyway: you can buy a lot less crap out of that wage.
You may look at how much of the world's oil did the USA produce before WW2, and how much it produces now. Right. Now all y'all driving SUVs and sports cars are doing it on imported oil. Why? Because if you paid to pump your own out, you'd start thinking more along the lines of "let's carpool" than "let's buy a SUV". That's life quality on cheap imported work for you.
Actually, let me rephrase that: you probably still _won't_ keep your high paid IT or marketting or management job anyway. You know why? Because all those white collar jobs are the result of an economy of abbundance. You have all the peons in Africa, South America, Asia, etc, doing the low level jobs, so you're mostly dealing with how to sell all that crap. Hence the massive advertising spending and all the jobs in marketting, research, legal, even services, etc.
It's all basically just society's way of dealing with a massive surpluss, and basically a chronic lack of need for manufacturing jobs. People get shifted into other jobs which don't directly produce anything tangible.
Now take away the surplus out of that economy, and you'll find yourself back to 1900 indeed. When you _need_ to dig out 100% of your ore needs yourself, _and_ pump (or synthetise) your own oil, _and_ manufacture shoes locally for everyone, and clothes, and cars, and everything... that all takes manpower.
Suddenly your problem is having people to sew clothes, not white collar marketeers to sell them. The supply and demand ratio got turned exactly on its head. Guess which jobs will be the first to get reduced within half a decade of isolationism?
I.e., if you want to try isolationism, be my guest. But if you think that'll keep your inflated living standard, you might be in for a very nasty surprise.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I am a Mauritian. For those who don't know, Mauritius is a small island in the Indian Ocean not too far from Madagascar which for the last 20 years has been progressing very well economically and technologically.
Since the last 2-3 years, the (democratic) government has decided to set up a cybercity and have identified a zone where all sorts of new infrastructures have been built (Internet connectivity, electricity, roads, housing etc)
The governement has also built in the middle of the cybercity a cybertower which is a 15-floor building with the latest facilities (like Internet connectivity).
We must now rent the space and, for the moment, some foreign (especially Indian and French) IT-related companies (mainly call centers) have already come.
Unfortunately, the private sector is not too keen to invest in the cybercity right now. In fact, apart from the cybertower, the cybercity is empty... The reasons for that are numerous: (1) the economic situation is difficult worldwide for most companies (2) the IT sector is very volatile and risky and (3) Mauritius doesn't have the required workforce (and I have to agree with that even though I am a Lecturer in Computer Science at tertiary level and it's my job to train IT professionnals...)
So for the time being, our cybercity is somewhat only a cybertower with some call centers...
While from this end IT outsourcing to Africa may stink of exploitation and job cuts and other capitalist odours, in Africa it may have a slightly less pungent aroma.
Any country that has the intention of entering this market has to make sure that it has the infrastructure to be a player. This involves having fatpipes that can link said country to the rest of the world, quickly and reliably. A work force that has the ability to perform the required operations is also paramount. This means education, literacy and access to knowledge.
Apparently, Nigeria has all that in place, but their ideas on what to do with it seriously need a kick in the ass so that they can see ways of using IT to generate diNeros beyond email scams. While the companies going in the may not want that for the Nigerians, I don't doubt some will see the light.
As for the other countries who aren't ready yet, well they just might get up off their asses, lay down some fatpipes and teach their kids to string code so they can get a piece of this digital pie.
Outsourcing will bring with it a lot of Worldcorp evil, but it may also cause Africa to get connected, like seriously connected, not just 56k over a 20 year old copperwire.
Maybe at some stage more Africans will be able to post their opinions on subjects that concern them.
___eFF 1.0
You think attacking Chinese workers was justified ? And you think it is ok for workers to harbour hostility towards Indians, for outsourcing ?
I think you need to understand that your job is not really yours. It belongs to the corporation that hires you, in the same manner that your car belongs to you not the mechanic who fixes it. If you change mechanics, is he justified in hating you ? I say no.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Ghana, Guyana, same thing. :P
The key issue here is our definition of our American culture. Are we a nation of laborers, or are we a nation of shareholders? Laborers want the right to work. Shareholders want profit. Our national demographic majority is shifting from laborers to shareholders as the baby-boomers age. I know, I am one - and my change in personal priorities in the face of escalating "global-resourcing" gave me pause. Am I more politically motivated about keeping my job, or having a fat 401K when I retire? My friends and family's opinions map pretty consistantly to this age curve. Do we become like other countries in the world and impose wage tarrifs and quotas, or do we allow the corporate free-fire zone that the U.S. has become to determine the lifestyle our citizens can anticipate?
> From the article: "... many companies are moving away from India as the place to outsource, because of the labor churn [emphasis mine] that is taking place in India."
Sorry, no hablo business jargon... Does anyone know what "labor churn" means? I really hope it doesn't mean making butter out of human beings.
#1 The map was in my grandad's house
#2 IIRC it was encouraged by ghanaian teachers in order to improve english language skills, which is a good reason to have a pen-pal! I didn't know it was two-way though.