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| Nigerian Job Applicants |
Unemployment
is a huge problem in Nigeria, the last uncontroversial rate from the National Bureau
of Statistics (NBS) for 2011 shows 23.9% of the population is unemployed.
However, unemployment amongst the youth is much higher.
This dire
situation makes it imperative for government and citizens to seek viable
solutions to this problem. This article is my contribution in this regard and it
focuses on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) as a means towards generating
employment in Nigeria.
According to
Wikipedia, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is a subset of outsourcing that
involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific
business process to a third-party service provider.
Statista
estimates that the global market size of business process outsourcing in 2014
amounted to 28.5 billion U.S. dollars.
This
business has huge potential for creating hundreds of thousands to millions of
jobs in Nigeria if the government implements the appropriate policies and
enters into partnership with the private sector including foreign investors to
create tech hubs.
The kinds of
jobs that would be created include: call center agents, data entry officers and
analysts. Nigeria's Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector has grown
astronomically since the introduction of GSM in 2001 and the country now has 100%
telephone penetration according to the National Communications Commission (NCC)
meaning that virtually every Nigerian has access to a phone and as technology advances;
the skill set of users keeps improving including many educated but unemployed
youths.
By creating
tech hubs that benefit from tax breaks and stable electricity supply from
off-grid Independent Power Plants {IPPs), the government can easily create jobs
to reduce the alarming rate of unemployment in Nigeria. If each tech hub has at
least 1,000 workstations, employees could work 6-hour shifts meaning one
workstation can accommodate 4 employees in a day.
100 tech
hubs could be open across the country with Lagos, Abeokuta, Ibadan, Port
Harcourt, Calabar, Enugu, Onitsha Owerri, Abuja, Kano, Kaduna and Jos hosting
them in the first phase. This could be expanded to ensure that there is at
least 1 tech hub in every state of the federation within a year.
Training
would be done to bring job applicants to the standard required to do these
jobs. With 4,000 jobs created at every tech hub multiplied by 100, we have
400,000 direct jobs created with about 100,000 related jobs to be created as
well from the process of building, maintaining and sustaining the tech hubs. This is an estimate for just the first year, in 4 years, 2 million jobs could be created as the industry expands and services are provided to foreign companies.
This idea is
viable and feasible as countries like India and The Philippines have benefitted
from BPO, I hope the in-coming government of General Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd.)
will work towards implementing or at least modifying it as it seeks to deliver
new jobs to the unemployed which is one of its key campaign promises to
Nigerians.
It is not only allowing getting a proper job but also creating the opportunity toward the new entrepreneurs and businesses to have a proper call center outsourcing services which control the best customer care services. They are professional and also get time to time training to offer the best.
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