Ethiopia’s BPO boom hampered by internet woes despite 11.5% growth
ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA — Ethiopia’s business process outsourcing sector is projected to nearly double to $845.7 million by 2030, riding on competitive wages and a young workforce.
Yet unreliable internet connectivity threatens this growth, with operators calling poor infrastructure a “hidden tax” that undermines productivity and global competitiveness, Addis Insight writes.
Ethiopia’s BPO sector poised for breakout growth
Ethiopia’s outsourcing industry has surged from $34 million in revenue in 2021 to $50 million today, with 25 registered firms now employing 15,000 workers—up from just 3,350 employees three years ago, according to Statista.
It also notes that the market is forecast to grow at 11.54% annually, reaching $489.85 million by 2025 and $845.7 million by 2030, fueled by competitive labor costs and multilingual talent.
Major players like Africa’s CCI Global are establishing operations in Addis Ababa, while the newly formed Ethiopian Outsourcing Association lobbies for sector support.
Addis Insight notes that government efforts, such as the Digital Ethiopia 2025 strategy plan and ICT park investments, aim to capitalize on Ethiopia’s optimal time zone to serve European and Middle Eastern markets.
Internet reliability threatens sector potential
Despite infrastructure improvements, including Ethio Telecom’s deployment of 1,683 new mobile sites and expansion of 4G LTE to 936 cities, BPO operators report persistent connectivity issues that force costly workarounds.
“These initiatives, combined with core 4G and 5G network expansions, have enhanced network capacity, customer experience, and access to quality mobile data services, strengthening the country’s digital infrastructure,” said Ethio Telecom.
Yonas Shiferaw, an engineer specializing in network engineering, expressed criticism of Ethiopia’s Internet infrastructure, citing the discrepancy between 4G speeds on paper, the policies that need to be followed, and the actual bandwidth congestion on overloaded networks, as well as the age of the systems.
“Fair Usage Policy (FUP), an international guideline, states that every individual should use the internet fairly,” explained Shiferaw to Addis Insight.
“But selling unlimited data under a limited policy isn’t appropriate. Remote workers, who consume large amounts of data, are finding this a major headache.”
Ethio Telecom has already increased the capacity of international gateways to 2.48 Tbps and transferred 35,701 customers to fiber, but, according to experts, the enterprise must adopt such technologies as airFiber as soon as possible for the growth of the sector to continue.
