Kampala — Since independence, Uganda has been actively engaged in the outsourcing industry, offshoring the refining and value-addition processes of most of her raw materials to Europe and America - to her disadvantage.

This sad spectacle is, however, set to change and the country is set to realise its first positive benefits out of outsourcing.

InterGlobal Services (IGS), a U.S. call centre operator in conjunction with the Busoga Kingdom are in the final stages of setting up a 150-seater world-class call centre in Jinja, 80 kilometres east of Kampala.

"We are about one month behind schedule," the prime minister of Busoga Kingdom, Mr. Martin Musumba revealed to Business Week, "but it should be up and running by the end of May."

The call centre will employ 450 operators, working 3 shifts everyday, and 7 days a week earning an estimated salary of about US$1,000 every month.

However, the groundwork for equipping the population to work in the intricate offshoring industry had started earlier.

The government through the ministry of education entered into an agreement with Global Management Consortium-Trade Information Network (GMC-TIN) and Serebra Learning Corporation (Canada) to provide low cost and affordable education in ICT, professional development courses including call technologies and call centre management through a programme known as EasyLearning.

This programme will, according to Mr. Godfrey Seruwagi, the EasyLearning national project coordinator, go a long way in "bridging the digital divide through access to ICT education and provide Ugandan's with outsourcing job opportunities."

Serebra, which owns the courseware has over 3,000 courses in its library but only 400 of those have been negotiated into EasyLearning and are accessible at a cost of Ush12,000 (US$6) per course.

Ms. Rossette Serwanga, the EasyLearning programme manager says that since its launch on January 17, 2006, over 600 people have sat and passed the online courses. Busoga Kingdom set up an e-Learning centre in Jinja called IT Synergies, where they have been training the future call centre operators and managers and are now set to run the first outsourcing centre in the country.

Outsourcing is the process through which one company hands over part of its work to another company, making it responsible for the design and implementation of the business process under strict guidelines regarding requirements and specifications from the outsourcing company.

In this age of globalisation, in a world where Information Technology (IT) has become the backbone of business, very many huge companies like IBM, General Electric, Microsoft, etc are beginning to move some of their vital but peripheral operations like low-end software development and help-desk services to low cost labour countries.

This phenomenon has mainly emerged due to stringent labour laws in developed countries and the need to cut costs to remain competitive.

Over the last decade, India has been the leading offshore destination for global IT and Business Process Offshoring (BPO) industries because of its huge pool of highly educated, English speaking workers who are willing to work for just a fraction of what their counterparts in Europe are paid.

These industries have played a major role in transforming India from a slow-growth economy with recurring balance of payments problems to a fast-growth economy generating ample foreign exchange surpluses.

India's offshoring industry earns foreign exchange revenue of about US$6billion and employs about 350,000 people.

However, India could soon lose its leading position as the world's 'back office.'

According to a study conducted by McKinsey & Company, a U.S. consultancy firm and the India IT body Nasscom, India's outsourcing industry will face a short fall of 500,000 workers in the next few years.

With Indian universities churning out 3.6million graduates every year, how can it be short of workers?

The problem in India, according to experts, has always been the quality of its workforce, not quantity.

US companies that operate call centres in India have continually complained the call centre agents' English accent being heavily influenced by their mother tongues. This has been India's biggest setback.

Fluency in English aside, employers also complain that the majority of India's IT graduates lacked computer skills, inability to reason clearly and think critically.

The Nasscom-McKinsey report indicates that only 13% of India's eligible workers are fit for employment in the offshoring industry.

This has prompted companies with call centres in India to employ foreigners who have the required competences. Young British graduates just out of college and looking for a year's travel and work experience are already taking jobs in New Delhi, Bangalore and Bombay.

Currently, there are about 40,000 foreigners working in India but a World Bank report indicates that by 2009, the number could go up to 160,000.

With the newly emerging BPO industries striving to get a hold of the few competent workers and the existing ones fighting to retain the ones they have, this competition will lead to an increase in wages, costs will rise and India will lose its biggest advantage cheap labour.

Enter Uganda

India's biggest disadvantage, it turns out, is Uganda's or indeed East Africa's greatest advantage.

Mr. Wallace Andrews, the CEO of InterGlobal Services (IGS), with call centres in India and Pakistan, audiotaped potential employees and later made remarks that Ugandans are "clear-accented, speak slowly and deliberately, and tend to have a cultural trait that makes them patient in dealing with customers."

Such characteristics, he reckons, could bring Ugandans key businesses from the U.S and elsewhere.

Uganda also has a huge pool of educated but unemployed or underemployed graduates.

Currently, universities and tertiary institutions in Uganda offload between 8,000 to 10,000 graduates into the job market annually but only a small percentage of those find gainful employment.

"People don't know that very many Ugandans are highly educated," Musumba said.

East Africa made its first stride in the BPO industry with the unveiling of KenCall's US$3.3million call centre in Nairobi. The facility currently has 100 seats but has the capacity to grow to over 400 seats.

In an aggressive bid to establish Kenya as a telecommunications hub and attract more foreign outsourcing business, the Kenyan government recently earmarked US$1.4million to mould some 10,000 Kenyans in the art of speaking with an American accent.

The Kenyan government wants to increase IT contribution to the GDP to 10%. What seemed like a pipe dream a few years ago now looks to be the most viable solution that will transform the East African economies and bring gainful employment to many of its unemployed graduates.

Of course East Africa is now starting where India started a decade ago, but experts believe that it can in future bypass it and become a leader in this industry.