




Having studied and worked in the United States I have witnessed companies create wealth by coming up with creative solutions to problems we didn’t know we had.
In 1960, South Korea had the same economy as Southern Rhodesia. They were both Agro based economies. South Korea realized that the future was technology, so they invested in their Universities. Today South Korea is an economic powerhouse.
The world has changed. Once we can accept this then we can start adapting to this change. The question is, how and what can we do to succeed in this new world? Some readers are probably saying we don’t have a Samsung or a Hyundai. That is true. We do however, have an Econet.
We need to understand how this new world works. Manufacturing is done in China. It is very difficult to compete with China. They have people who can produce at a fraction of what most countries can.
The next question is what we can do in this new world. The answer is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). I have personally seen jobs being exported to India and now the Philippines. There has been a massive training of programmers in the Philippines. American, Canadian, and Australian companies are sending jobs there because it now costs less money than India.
In my current job, we deal with programmers from the Philippine’s on a daily basis. I have asked them if they would like to migrate to the US or Canada and they have refused saying that they prefer being in their countries. What the government has done is helped to reduce the brain drain.
According to the Information Technology and Business Process Association of the Philippines (IBPAP), the Philippine information technology and business process management (IT-BPM) industry employed 776,794 people at the end of 2012, wherein it added 137,066 new jobs. This new intake reflects 21 percent growth from 2011.
In 2012, the BPO attributed 5.4% of the countries GDP. In 2013, revenues climbed to $15.5 Billion employing over 900,000 Filipino’s.In 2016, the BPO industry was projected to generate 1.3M new jobs, with 17% annual growth.
Zimbabwe is blessed with the highest literacy rate in Africa. We have great universities that are graduating software engineers. We also happen to speak English, the international language of business. This is a formula for success. We should seize this opportunity and start planning for the transformation.
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