GBS World Competitiveness Index Provides First Global Rankings

High Performer, Proficient and Capable African countries ranked by global buyers

The GBS World Competitiveness Index was launched to a globalaudienceon August 26, 2021, in an industry webinar hosted by GBS.World, Knowledge Executive and Genesis.

The index and rankings were drawn from extensive survey data from the annual Knowledge Executive GBS Vertical Industry Demand Survey. A total of 360 interviews were conducted for the global vertical industry demand survey via outbound calls and telephonic interviews during April and May 2021 with enterprise executives. These respondents represented organizations in Australia, Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The fieldwork for the global vertical industry demand survey also included interviews with enterprise executives, directors and heads of department of over 140 organizations that outsource and offshore services to Africa. These executives were asked to rank and rate each African country, including service level delivery across various key business process areas. As a result, the top 10 countries were ranked according to their final scores and placed in three categories: High Performer, Proficient and Capable.

Additional analyses were conducted on each country’s talent pools, skills development initiatives, youth populations, ICT infrastructure, transport systems, multilingual capabilities, labour costs, specialist BPS services, BPO and CX capabilities, economic and political stability. Tallied results established the final competitiveness scores across the top 19 African GBS locations.

South Africa leads the overall rankings for contact center voice service delivery, with a score of 6.60. Egypt (5.93) and Morocco (4) are ranked second and third, respectively. Tunisia is ranked last, with a score of 1.50. Nigeria (2.40) and Zimbabwe (2.80) have the third and second-lowest ratings, respectively. 

Enterprise executives were also asked to score and rank offshore African locations where they currently outsource or co-source back office processes. South Africa was noted as a leading destination for back office processing service delivery, scoring 5.24 out of 8 along with Egypt with a score of 4.95, followed by Nigeria (4.86).

Renowned for its digital and IT-enabling services Egypt (6.27) took first place for digital contact center services, followed closely by South Africa (6.04). Morocco (5.34) took third place, followed by Kenya (5.04).

Egypt also scored the highest for the delivery of data management services, with a score of 6,03. South Africa was ranked second, with a score of 5.87, followed by Mauritius, with a score of 5.43.

South Africa was ranked first in the customer administration service delivery rating, with a score of 6.10 out of 8. Egypt (5.71) was ranked a close second, followed by Morocco (5.24).

Additional analyses were conducted on each country’s talent pools, skills development initiatives, youth populations, ICT infrastructure, transport systems, multilingual capabilities, labour costs, specialist business process services, customer experience (CX) capabilities, economic and political stability. Tallied results established the final competitiveness scores across the top 19 African GBS locations.

The African business process outsourcing (BPO) and broader global business services (GBS) sector is poised for exponential growth as the domestic and international markets of various countries expand and flex their outsourcing and offshoring proficiencies. Research conducted by Knowledge Executive found that the total African GBS offshoring market alone is expected to reach US$11.7 billion by 2023 from $8.3 billion in 2021.

GBS.World plans to release the results for Eastern Europe, Central and Latin America and Asia Pacific for the GBS World Competitiveness Index in 2021.