The new information and communications technology have made life easier for workers who are now more flexible because they don’t have to be present in the actual office to do the work they are asked to do. This revolutionary opportunity commonly known as teleworking is spreading all over the African continent.
Teleworking specifically refers to a particular work organization where you have a professional activity but you are entirely or partly doing it from a remote place. Thanks to the Information and communications technology (internet, cellphone, fax etc) the work is done outside of the business premises. It can be done from a home, from a telecentre, a satellite office etc.
With a population of 60% of young people, half of them being unemployed, Africa can now reverse the trend by considerably reducing the unemployment rate thanks to teleworking.
This is at least what one of the International Labour Organization’s report on job in Africa confirmed. This report named “relocation and working conditions in Africa” is the first in depth study conducted on teleworking, and includes “spoken”services on one side, like call centers or customers contact centers and administrative services on the other side like finance and accounting, processing and management of computer data, and human resources development.
According to this report, teleworking generally speaking, which include relocation and externalisation of the services of the developed countries to the developing countries thanks to information technologies, created “relatively decent jobs giving the local practices” in Africa.
However, the report asks for an improvement of the teleworking sector in Africa, so it can offer a real decent job in the continent. This advocacy is even more relevant giving the fact that every year, one out of two graduates from one of the hundreds African universities, can’t seem to have a successful professional integration in his area of expertise, or try his luck in Europe where the country as much as the economy are getting less and less welcoming.
Teleworking intends to be a tool that will allow young Africans to benefit from means that would make them grow and prosper in a job market that is more and more opened and international.
Africa could rise to the top of the world job market and be among the best thanks to the burst of teleworking, especially now considering the fact that the world is dealing with a serious lack of qualified multi tasked workers.