Uganda is becoming more involved in the industry known as outsourcing, where a company hires another company, often overseas, to produce goods and services at a lower cost than if the original company does it themselves.
Wallace Andrews is the president and CEO of the Massachusetts based Interglobal Services, an international company that develops call centers, used for outsourcing operations.
A center is being set up in the town of Jinja, 80 kilometers from Kampala. He told Voice of America reporter Cole Mallard that outsourcing is “attractive because it allows companies to cut their costs; at the same time producing a very high quality product.”
He says that outsourcing is going to be globalization’s newest approach because it allows countries to gain income from the world market. Andrews says that countries with an educated labor force and high unemployment find outsourcing is a “new source of revenue.” He gives India, China, Russia, Serbia and Mexico as examples that Uganda may follow as it gains more experience. He adds that Uganda can compete on the world market because of its English speaking, educated, low cost labor force.
Andrews says his organization is hoping to develop an east African regional outsourcing model in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia to develop their economies. He says the model won’t promote competition; it will be “a block where outsourcing resources can be developed and shared in terms of attracting global markets.”
Andrews says rather than taking jobs away from the United States, outsourcing will export the already developed lower paying jobs to other countries in need of the revenue. Meantime, he says the United States “tends to have very good universities, very good research and development and a lot of companies who start and foster new technology” saying “our strong point is not necessarily in some of the low end jobs, but really in continuing to be a world leader in fostering development, research, and new products and services.”
