French call centres flourish in Senegal

DAKAR • The first thing Djibril Niang does when he gets to work in Senegal’s capital is check the weather in Paris.

After that he scours French news sites on the Internet, then calls his first client in Marseille or maybe Bordeaux, introduces himself as ‘Claude’, and starts talking about the latest offer from one of France’s top cell phone companies.

Niang works for Centre Value, one of Senegal’s growing army of call centres employed by French companies to sell mobile phones, bank accounts and even cars over the phone from the capital of this West African country.

With some of the best telecommunications on the continent, plenty of cheap labour, strong historic links with France and relative political stability, Senegal is increasingly taking on Morocco and Tunisia in the battle for the French call centre outsourcing market.

“This industry creates a lot of jobs, and it’s an area where we can compete thanks to low labour costs,” Senegal’s Communications Minister Joseph Ndong said.

Senegal’s big draw card is its telecommunications – excellent by African standards and often cited as a model for a continent where expensive and unreliable phone and Internet connections often serve as extra deterrents for investors.

Senegal privatised fixed-line operator Sonatel, which is now part-owned by France Telecom, in 1997 - way before most African countries - and is about to invite bids for a second fixed licence that will include a mobile and data component.

Access to the SAT-3 international undersea cable makes for fast Internet access and cheaper voice over Internet calls, while the government offered tax breaks to call centre investors and has pushed Sonatel to cut call tariffs.

London-based research group Datamonitor says Senegal had 3,000 call centre agent positions in 2005 but expects that to grow to 5,000 within three years – still small compared to outsourcing giants like India, but growing fast.