“Wily Brokers” Hurt Kenyan Outsourcing Firms

Brokers have cost some of East Africa’s top outsourcing firms tens of thousands of dollars in finder’s fees that led nowhere. A recent article in Business Daily Africa reports that many local firms are forced to use middlemen to find work, since foreign business development is prohibitively expensive. Often based abroad, middlemen dictate contract terms under local legal jurisdictions, making it impossible for firms to recoup fees. For small outsourcing companies in Kenya, these fees aren’t trivial:

 …two of the leading call centres in the country, KenCall and Skyweb Evans,  say they have fallen prey to wily brokers who target new entrants in the sector.

KenCall EPZ Chief Executive Officer Nick Nesbitt says his firm lost between $200,000 to $300,000 over three years to a number of brokers from India and United States three years ago when he started the business.

“During this period the amount meant a lot to my company. We could not afford to pay salaries and our growth slowed,” said Nesbitt.

Comments welcome — thanks to Chris at Globefinity.net for the story.