With the increasing number of companies and startups every year in the African professional market, the need for technical, functional and digital skills with international standards increases too.
But Africa has its own realities. Today, large corporations, many of which are multinationals, are looking for competences able to monitor the conversion of the company and making it functional in its adoption environment.
Two important choices are offered to recruiters from these big companies: the local expertise and the foreign expertise, especially those from the Diaspora.
In one of its publications, Jeune Afrique magazine raised the issue of the insufficient level of training sometimes, necessary for local candidates to respond quickly to certain professional requirements.
However, the majority of junior positions are entrusted to local executives. In sectors such as banks, mines, large-scale distribution, construction etc.:
“Multinationals battle in order to recruit African managers, which is a boon for the latter, as the job offers and salaries increase”, the magazine writes.
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In other sectors, it becomes a stressful exercise for recruiters to source the right talent
These include infrastructure (roads, energy, etc.), construction or mining, where it’s harder to find their local engineers and project managers. Despite this, some employers still call on local managers, with an additional training as a pre-condition.
The main advantage offered by the local expertise, according to the document, is their ability to reduce their costs (housing, vehicle, security premiums), their cultural proximity and to avoid paper burden in hiring expatriates.
But in fact, in the mid-top management, the expertise and experience of the managers of the Diaspora is much appreciated by multinationals. And to make a difference, the African expatriates quickly changed their perception of the recruitment market. Nowadays, many of them accept proposals for key positions in multinational companies, under more flexible conditions, or even very close to local manager’s.
More and more qualified and expatriate African managers agree to line up their salary expectations according to Western standards (between 2.5 and 4 million F CFA francs per month), but with fewer additional benefits: that is the sacrifice to start the ideal “homecoming” and a new promising career.