Indian call centres could face Kenyan challenge

Nairobi: With the submarine optical fibre cable being laid on the Eastern Africa coast, Kenya could pose a challenge to India, which has in the past decade dominated the outsourcing industry, with revenues totalling $6.3 billion (Rs27,953.1 crore) in 2005-2006.

Eastern Africa currently relies on satellites for its international data telecommunications, which is more expensive than using a submarine optical fibre cable.

Bitenge Ndemo, Nigeria's information and communications permanent secretary, yesterday said that two major airlines are planning to shift their call centre operations from India to Kenya in anticipation of new submarine cable becoming operational.

Without naming them, Ndemo said the government would subsidise the telecommunications costs of the two airlines to enable them to function cost effectively. He added that the World Bank would finance the cost of the subsidy.

He said the airlines were willing to invest in Kenya because of the quality of the country's human resources, he said.

Kenya hopes to become a centre for business processing outsourcing operations and to attract business it needs to increase its bandwidth to 500 megabits by the end of the current year and subsidize the costs until the submarine optical fibre cable is laid out sometime in 2008.

The official added that the new investment would create 2,000 jobs in Kenya.