Africa's IT Market

2024: Shaping the Software Development Outsourcing Industry

The number of programmers in African countries per million inhabitants in 2024 is vertical. Horizontally - the number of developers in the country.

The more to the right and higher, the higher the likelihood that these countries will supply replacements to cheap Indian developers. Except, of course, South Africa - there salaries will be too high for a cheap segment. The English of Africans as a whole is much more comfortable than the Indian version, and more comfortable than the original too.

The reasons are the most understandable:

• a very young population;
• a lot of self-taught, because this is one of the very few social elevators in the region that lead not down, but at least somehow up;
• technological hubs have already appeared, such as Nairobi (Kenya) and Lagos (Nigeria), i.e. developers can communicate with each other, support, do some joint projects, etc.

There have long been local outsourcing "galleys" here - Andela, a number of other large companies with several thousand coders. Most likely, in the next year or two, one of the major Eastern European outsourcers will enter the region - it is possible that Reksoft and someone else from the region, wrote the Lyapin channel. Africa. "

2022

Number of startups in Africa

Data for 2019-2022

Start-ups with Africa's biggest investment

TOP-20 of venture capital investments attracted by African companies over 4 years.

Basically, the list contains financial services - payment systems of all varieties, MFIs, banking. Other - power, outsourcing development.

2018: Internet penetration compared to other regions

2018

2012: IT companies of Russia in the market of African countries

Forecast

Forecast, a developer of business intelligence software, plans to open a regional office on the African continent in the near future, according to TAdviser. The office of the Ural company will be located in the capital of Zambia - Lusaka.

The "Forecast" business in Africa has gone sharply uphill over the past two years. Moreover, in 2012 abroad, the main resources of the Forecast will be focused on the African market, "Dmitry Andrianov, CEO of the company, told TAdviser. "There is a very real prospect of providing our developments to the governments of most countries of the continent. This would be a unique achievement not only among Russian developers, but also worldwide, "he added.

As Sergey Lebedinets, Head of International Projects "Forecast," explained to TAdviser, the vendor's work in Africa began with the StatCom II statistical conference in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) in January 2010. This is a global event in which almost all African countries, represented primarily by the heads of statistics bodies, took part.

At the Forecast conference, it was possible to acquaint potential customers with their analytics solutions. The first implementation in Africa was a portal for the statistics department of the African Development Bank, work on the project was completed at the end of 2011. Then "Forecast" received orders for the development of a number of thematic applications for several departments of the African Bank, in total in 2011 the company from Russia created more than 10 such applications.

In 2011, work began on the creation of applications for the statistical authorities of African countries. The main goal of this initiative is to form a single continental network for the exchange and dissemination of statistical data. For many African countries, whose statehood history goes back only a few decades, this is an important infrastructure project. Both the African Development Bank and other international organizations need to have detailed data on the socio-economic situation of various African territories in order to ensure effective support for their development, explains Sergey Lebedinets.

At the end of 2011, the company released a software package for Mozambique, in February 2012 - for Rwanda, a number of countries are next in line. In early 2012, Forecast entered into an agreement to develop a portal for COMESA, the economic community of East and South Africa. The new complex will contain indicators of socio-economic development of 19 African COMESA member states, data on national accounts and tariffs, international trade.

The plans of the management of the "Forecast" for the next 3 years are to cover all 54 countries of the continent with the company's decisions. And opening its own representative office in Zambia will help expand the company's business in Africa and attract new customers.

General Director of "Forecast" D.L. Andrianov and representative of AfDB Koua Louis Kouaka

Russian developers, as TAdviser managed to find out, relate to the prospects for the development of their own business in Africa both with caution and with great interest.

Parallels

Another domestic player who in 2011 noticeably intensified on the continent - Parallels (Parallels Software).

As Alexander Fine, Parallels territorial manager in Africa, told TAdviser, the company is interested in the region because "this is one of the fastest growing regions in the world, a real emerging market." According to him, the development of countries on the continent is very heterogeneous, the restraining factors for business development are security problems, lack of infrastructure (broadband access) and low IT in general, as well as unemployment (which, in particular, stimulates crime).

Russian developers are interested in countries with developed IT infrastructure, such as South Africa and Nigeria

But there are several countries in Africa that have shown positive dynamics recently. It is such countries that provide the greatest interest for Parallels, said Alexander Fine. This is primarily South Africa and Nigeria. Behind them are Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe.

Alexander Fine says that a number of Parallels products are provided in Africa through partners, in terms of hosting and cloud products - direct sales prevail. "Africa is certainly a challenging but very interesting market. The asset includes more than a billion people living in countries, many of whom may soon make a leap in the development of IT, and in particular, cloud services, "he added. It's too early to say what Africa's share of the Parallels business will be, the Parallels said, but in a few years it could be a few per cent of total revenue.

Parallels' core business is service provider software solutions through which they provide cloud services for small businesses. Therefore, an important factor for Parallels is the development of telecommunications infrastructure in a single country. Until recently, the region had poor coverage, expensive traffic, there were no offers with unlimited access - they are just beginning to appear in individual countries. States on the continent were poorly connected to each other over the network.

"Things are gradually improving," the Parallels manager noted. Telecom operators are laying trunk lines throughout the continent - along the East and West coasts. This unties the hands of service providers who want to provide cloud services. "For example, WebEx and other rather" heavy "online services are already working well - you can freely communicate with South Africa via video link, although a few years ago you couldn't even dream of this," says Fine.

In Africa, every 10% rise in broadband penetration is followed by 1.3% economic growth, according to World Bank estimates

According to the GSMA study, Africa is the fastest growing mobile market, the penetration of cell phones at the end of 2012 will be 738 million units here. The development of 3G networks for the first time provided access to the network Internet to millions of African residents. In Africa, the World Bank estimates that every 10% rise in broadband penetration is followed by 1.3% economic growth. Pan-African operators MTN and Vodacom have already started LTE pilot testing in South Africa, while Kenya's biggest player Safaricom is testing 4G in the local market.

ABBYY

In Africa, the company is present Abbyy Russia through the ABBYY 3A division, where one of the three "A" is designated Africa (the other two A Asia - and South America). The division began operations in 2010. In Africa, ABBYY "'Oleg Sazhin'" 3A Development Director said, along with the distribution of ABBYY FineReader, the company is focusing heavily on corporate and government projects.

ABBYY's work in the region is carried out through local partners: they know the market better, its features, they have no language barrier and cultural differences. There are large customers: Ghana National Social Insurance, almost all private pension funds in Nigeria, the South African Government Department for Land Relations and others.

Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique, Zimbabwe are in second place in terms of attractiveness for IT expansion

PROMT

PROMT has also implemented several projects in Africa. Alexey Lyapunov, head of the company's international sales department, told TAdviser that so far PROMT has few direct contacts with customers from Africa, but the local market is growing rapidly. Among the customers, he named ASR Geology Consulting, Lope Technologies Limited and others, there are contracts under signing. "PROMT has the main European languages, so now we are present in the markets of those countries in which these languages ​ ​ are state-owned or common among white-collar workers," explained Alexey Lyapunov.

According to him, accordingly, these countries constitute the most attractive market for PROMT in Africa. "As for the remaining numerous languages ​ ​ of the African continent, with such an order, we can develop a statistical translator for any of them," the top manager said.