Cape Town graduates 500 young people from its BPO skills program
- More than 500 young Capetonians completed the CapeBPO Skills Programme.
- Cape Town has created 44,803 net new international-facing BPO jobs since July 2021.
- The city recorded 11,496 BPO jobs in the 2025/2026 financial year.
- The Jobs Fund, BankSETA and DEDAT fund the programme.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — More than 500 young Capetonians have completed a skills program built to help unemployed people with little or no business process outsourcing (BPO) experience enter one of the city’s fastest-growing employment sectors.
The graduates were connected directly to employment opportunities across the international and domestic BPO markets.
Training tied to jobs
The CapeBPO Skills Programme is funded by the Jobs Fund, BankSETA and the Western Cape Government’s Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT), Cape Town ETC reported.
It is run by BPO Skills Academy in partnership with CapeBPO, and gives participants industry-specific skills before they enter the workforce.
The city said 44,803 net new international-facing BPO jobs have been created in Cape Town since July 2021, with more than 10,000 in each of the past three financial years and 11,496 in 2025/2026 alone.
“Those numbers are important, but what matters to me is what they represent. Behind every job is someone earning an income, gaining experience and getting the opportunity to build a career,” said Alderman James Vos, the city’s Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Growth.
A pipeline for the sector
CapeBPO CEO Clayton Williams said the focus was on creating pathways into the sector for young people with limited or no BPO experience.
“These 500-plus young people have completed an accredited programme and have been connected directly to employment opportunities across both the international and domestic BPO markets,” Williams said.
Cape Town’s contact center industry serves customers beyond South Africa, drawing on the city’s multilingual and English-language talent base.
The city pointed to the Ryan Strategic Advisory Offshore CX Confidence Index 2025, in which executives expressed confidence in South Africa’s English-language talent pool, commercial property market and industry ecosystem.
Vos said the city identifies sectors where Cape Town has a competitive advantage, attracts investment and helps build the skills pipeline employers need.
The city also highlighted its Youth Skills Accelerator Programme as part of efforts to prepare more young people for growth sectors.
For buyers, a steady flow of trained entry-level agents helps providers in Cape Town scale contact center teams without starting from scratch.
That supports offshore outsourcing programs that need English-speaking staff in a time zone close to the U.K. and Europe.
Firms comparing locations can review the top BPO companies in South Africa and ask how each recruits and trains new agents.
Related news
- Cape Town’s BPO sector adds a record 11,496 jobs · 2 Jul
- South Africa’s BPO sector to miss 500,000-job target: BPESA · 6 Oct
- Nelson Mandela Bay emerges as SA’s next BPO hub · 14 Aug
Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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