Kenya needs to raise outsourcing profile

By Helen Nyambura-Mwaura

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The chief executive of Kenya's leading outsourcing company said on Thursday the east African nation must raise its international profile in the fast-growing sector to compete with established players in Asia.

With 500 agents and five major international clients, KenCall has been at the forefront of an emerging outsourcing industry in Kenya, and is hungry for more growth.

"There's not been enough of a bang," CEO Nicholas Nesbitt told Reuters in an interview.

"The prospects are good and the opportunity is tremendous in Kenya. But right now, there are not many people looking at Kenya. They are still looking at India and the Philippines because Kenya has not yet built a critical mass of players in the industry."

Kenya's government and private sector have set up a board that will market the industry internationally, set policies and lobby authorities, Nesbitt added.

Some 3,000 Kenyans now work in call centres, with the outsourcing sector encompassing about 30 companies. KenCall and three others dominate, industry players say. KenCall wants to treble its number of agents by the end of 2008.

KenCall's main business is taking customer service calls for clients in the United States and neighbouring countries ranging from mobile phones and insurance to internet access and financial services, Nesbitt said.

One of its main clients, U.S. internet service provider Earthlink, ranked his centre best in April and June, out of 13 other such centres worldwide, Nesbitt said.

Four of the five best individual agents judged by Earthlink came from KenCall, he added proudly.

"We were able to show that the team here can work at a global level," he said. "We have been able to give world-class service to people who were not even expecting it."

"WORLD-CLASS"

Entrepreneurs in the sector agree that Kenya has the key components for an outsourcing hub: an educated labour-force with good work ethic and fluent English. But they also say Kenya badly needs more international marketing.

"There are a few pioneers but they are not enough. So the visibility is not as great," Nesbitt said at his buzzing office in Nairobi's industrial area.

Kenya's reliance on satellite links to transmit calls has made it a very expensive venture for call centres.

But they are making do and using technology to improve voice quality before Kenya's first fibre-optic telecoms link lands at the port city of Mombasa. That is scheduled for mid-2008.

"The technology we have right now, we can make it work at world-class levels. After all, all of India's call centre business was originally built on satellite," Nesbitt said.

KenCall has already diversified into the "back office" part of Business Process Outsourcing, developing and maintaining complex databases for a U.S. financial services company.

KenCall has invested $3 million since it was set up in 2004. But it has been a struggle, Nesbitt said. Twice, KenCall laid off almost all its agents, sought new financing and started afresh.

Nesbitt said the firm was now profitable.

It has been talking with mobile phone firms and governments in neighbouring countries to set up call-centres there, and expects east Africa to rival Asia as companies diversify.