GBS World News | Week 2 | September 2021

Africa has been affirmed as a Global Business Services (GBS) powerhouse, where it is expected that the sector will reach US$20 billion by 2023, according to findings in the 2021 Knowledge Executive Africa Global Business Services (GBS) Benchmarking and Market Report. Although the continent is an emerging player in global GBS delivery, currently valued at US$19,8 billion, it is showing signs of global competitiveness and maturity. South Africa, Egypt, and Nigeria are prominent features in the report due to their deep talent pools, multilingual capabilities, and high-quality GBS output.

U.S.-based service strategic outsourcer and IT systems integrator, Neosystems, is being acquired by High Street Capital, a private-equity firm situated in Chicago. Neosystems executive management team will remain as is. The company highlighted the expansion of their service offerings and optimizing market opportunities as reasons for the acquisition, initiatives which will be funded by High Street Capital.

Fintech investments have taken Europe by storm, although it is Germany that is dominating the space, according to an IBS Intelligence insights article. N26, Mambu, Solaris Bank, and Raisin are the top four German Fintech companies that have made the largest gains in the European market, utilising blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions as market differentiators.

e-Commerce in South East Asia has experienced a huge surge in growth, achieving 85% year-on-year growth, according to the Facebook and Bain & Company’s annual SYNC Southeast Asia report. These gains sped past other high-growth regions, including China (5%), Brazil (14%), and India (10%). The core growth driver was the COVID-19 pandemic, which pushed consumers to go online to do their shopping. This shift in consumer behaviour has forced existing and new brands to rethink their traditional e-commerce platforms in ways to connect and inspire their customers.

Leading Canadian technology-enabled logistics and delivery provider, Bolt Logistics, has partnered with Freightcom Inc, a logistics and e-commerce technology provider, to completely transform and scale their logistics for small-to-medium-sized ecommerce businesses across the country. Improvements in customer experience (CX) and efficient logistics fulfilment for small-to-medium-sized Canadian ecommerce businesses are the primary objectives of the partnership. In general news, the global content moderation solutions market is set for strong growth of a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.6% between 2021 and 2026 due to the alarming inflow of inappropriate content across online mediums. The surge in hoaxes, violence, propaganda, and spam must be thwarted by human and AI content moderators, driving growth in the industry. Governments have also implemented a series of new legislation to regulate online content, further increasing the need for content moderation services to ensure these laws are being met, adding to the sector’s growth.