An international network of public accounting, tax and advisory firms BDO, has announced plans to outsource Kenyan expertise to other African states in its expansion strategy.
The firm has been outsourcing its expertise from Mauritius and South Africa and now says following the expansion of its Kenyan offices it will be looking to tap local talent.
The Regional Director for Africa at BDO International, Mark Stewart says that outsourcing is becoming expensive, and firms are increasingly struggling to keep calling for a need to tap locally available expertise.
“There could be about 50 as the first tranche of Kenyan skilled workforce that we could feed in the global market in the short term,” said Stewart
Companies usually outsource to reduce costs and take advantage of the expertise that they don’t have so that they can focus on their core business.
There are, however, several reasons including the need to navigate unfamiliar territories, especially when setting up services or operations in a foreign country.
BDO announced an expansion of its Kenyan presence at a time that the whole globe is on recession fears.
Already the company is eyeing to serve the greater EAC region with another office to be developed in DRC.
This is for two reasons, to serve the DRC market which is promising, and to tap into the country’s outsourcing potential and the growing African business.
While most African countries have made huge strides in educating their young population, the same success cannot be said of job creation.
A key factor behind this is mostly as a result of Africa’s key resources and investment structure, which are predominantly capital intensive and not labour intensive, resulting in few jobs created per unit of capital infused into the economy, for example, the mining sector.
According to experts, for a country that intends to create jobs, developing as an Outsourcing Hub for foreign companies is usually the way to go, especially now that the world has become a global village, thanks to advancements in technology.
“We are now setting strategy going forward on where to get access to the best talent going forward,” said BDO global CEO Pat Kramer.
BDO public accounting, tax and advisory firms provide professional services in 167 countries, with approximately 100,000 people and 1,728 offices worldwide.
