For years, when leaders thought about IT outsourcing companies, they defaulted to India or Eastern Europe. That’s changing fast.
Africa is emerging as a serious contender for IT outsourcing services, offering a rare mix of deep technical talent, cost efficiency, strong time-zone overlap, and improving digital infrastructure. At the same time, specialized partners like The JADA Squad make it easier than ever to tap into this talent without the usual outsourcing friction.
In this guide, you’ll learn:
- Why IT outsourcing companies are turning to Africa
- What kind of roles can you reliably fill from African tech hubs
- How to evaluate an Africa-based outsourcing firm or partner
- Why working with JADA de-risks and accelerates your move into the region
- A clear mental model to pilot your first squad
Why IT Outsourcing Companies Are Turning to Africa?
Africa is a fast-growing, strategically placed outsourcing hub with real numbers behind it.
A Rapidly Growing BPO & Tech Talent Market
The continent’s business process outsourcing (BPO) and digital services sector is already sizable and expanding:
- Africa’s BPO sector employs over 1.2 million people and is valued at USD 8.85 billion in 2025, with projections reaching USD 14.75 billion by 2033 and 1.5 million additional jobs by 2030.
- The broader Africa BPO market was valued at about USD 3 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at around 4% CAGR from 2025 to 2033.
There’s already a large, established outsourcing base, and it’s growing.
Strong Tech Hubs, Modern Stacks
Cities like Nairobi, Lagos, Cairo, Cape Town, Kigali, Accra and others are now home to:
- Software engineering and product companies
- Global and local cloud providers
- Data, AI and analytics teams
- Startup ecosystems backed by international investors
English Proficiency and Collaboration
Many African markets have:
- High English proficiency (and often French, Arabic or Portuguese as well)
- Exposure to Western culture and media
- Experience working in Agile, Git-based projects for US and EU clients
This makes it easier for distributed teams to collaborate without constant misunderstandings or translation overhead.
In-Demand Roles IT Outsourcing Companies Can Fill From Africa
African teams already deliver across the engineering spectrum:
Software Engineers and QA Automation
- Backend and API engineers
- Front-end and full stack (React, Vue, Angular, etc.)
- Mobile dev (iOS, Android, cross-platform)
- QA automation with tools like Cypress, Playwright, Selenium
Data Analysts, Data Engineers and ML Engineers
- Building and maintaining modern data pipelines
- BI dashboards and self-service analytics
- Experimentation and basic ML workflows
- Support for predictive analytics and model monitoring
DevOps and Cloud Platform Engineers
- Infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation)
- CI/CD pipelines, observability, SRE practices
- Cloud cost optimization and platform reliability
Product-Aware Full Stack Developers
Many African engineers have worked in startups and product companies. They can:
- Join backlog refinement, not just “take tickets”
- Think in terms of user outcomes and business goals
- Ship end-to-end features with quality assurance baked in
Generative AI Engineers and LLM Specialists
- Prompt engineering for multi-step tasks and domain-specific use cases
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines for accurate, grounded outputs
- LLM application development across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and open-source models
- Fine-tuning and embedding workflows for improved relevance and personalization
- Integrations with CRMs, ticketing systems, knowledge bases, and internal APIs
Agentic AI Workflow and Automation Engineers
- Multi-agent architecture design with clear roles, memory, and reasoning loops
- Workflow orchestration for sales, marketing, support, and internal operations
- Tool and API integrations that allow agents to execute tasks, not just generate text
- Guardrail setup, safety checks, and human-in-the-loop escalation paths
- Monitoring, evaluation, and continuous refinement of agent performance
For IT outsourcing companies and internal teams, this allows you to extend not just capacity, but also product thinking.
Cost Competitiveness Without Sacrificing Outcomes
Africa is attractive because it offers both cost savings and high-quality output:
- Cost of labour can be up to 50% lower than traditional outsourcing destinations like India and the Philippines, while still delivering skilled, English-speaking teams.
- Africa combines lower operating costs with access to qualified, multilingual staff and is increasingly chosen by brands looking to rebalance their outsourcing footprint.
For a company with a multi-year roadmap, that difference compounds into real business growth, you can afford an entire team instead of a single hire, 24/7 coverage instead of office-hours only, or a more robust QA + Dev + DevOps mix.
Time Zone Overlap That Simplifies Collaboration
Time zones can make or break an outsourcing relationship.
Africa’s positioning is a major asset:
- Strong overlap with Western Europe and the UK for full workdays
- Excellent alignment with the Middle East (UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman) for full real-time collaboration
- Good overlap with the US East Coast for several hours each day
- Partial but workable overlap with the US West Coast for handoffs, async work, and daily syncs
Africa is cost-effective and provides time zone alignment, enabling proactive communication and faster iteration compared to more distant offshore regions.
Practically, this means:
- Real-time standups instead of async-only
- Live pair programming and code reviews
- Faster incident response and lower coordination overhead
Communication, Culture, and Delivery Practices That Fit Modern Teams
Most Africa-based talent you’ll work with are:
- Comfortable with Agile / Scrum / Kanban
- Used to Git-based branching, PR reviews, CI/CD pipelines
- Familiar with security-first delivery expectations
- Trained to document systems and decisions clearly
Add in strong written and verbal English, and you get teams that plug into existing engineering cultures with minimal friction, essential for quality assurance and long-term maintainability.
How to Evaluate Africa-Based IT Outsourcing Companies
Not all partners are equal. Here’s a practical checklist to evaluate any Africa-based outsourcing firm or staff augmentation provider.
Vetting and Proof of Skill
Many IT outsourcing companies go wrong; they stop at CVs. You should look for partners who:
- Run practical assessments that mirror production tasks (not just generic quizzes)
- Share portfolio examples of shipped systems similar to what you need
- Offer paid trial sprints (2–4 weeks) so you can validate code quality, communication, and velocity before scaling
Security, Compliance, and IP Protection
You need the same standards you’d expect anywhere else:
- Least-privilege access and role-based permissions
- Clear policies for environment access, VPN, logging, and audit trails
- Contractual clarity around IP ownership, confidentiality, and data use
- Documented incident response and rollback procedures
Delivery Models and SLAs
A serious partner will be clear on:
- Staff augmentation: external engineers embedded in your team
- Project squads: managed teams delivering defined outcomes
- Hybrid: your leads, their execution capacity
SLAs should cover:
- Responsiveness and time to acknowledge issues
- Code review cadence and testing expectations
- Defect thresholds or quality targets
- Documentation standards and knowledge transfer
Why JADA is the Right Partner When Hiring From Africa?
Most companies underestimate how much work it takes to build a reliable Africa-based outsourcing strategy, including sourcing, screening, training, onboarding, security, and ongoing performance management.
At The JADA Squad, we do the heavy lifting long before an engineer joins your team.
Our talent is sourced through a rigorous multi-step vetting process, trained continuously at the JADA Academy, and continuously upskilled in cloud, data, AI, and agentic workflows. We also stay involved throughout the engagement to ensure outcomes, quality, and knowledge transfer.
With JADA, you gain access to a system designed to produce consistently high-performing talent. Curious to see what we can do for you? Talk to our experts today!
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an IT outsourcing company?
An IT outsourcing company is a firm that provides technology services, such as software development, infrastructure management, support, or QA, to clients, often remotely. It lets businesses access specialised skills and scale faster without hiring every role in-house.
What is the most commonly outsourced IT service?
The most commonly outsourced IT services include application development, maintenance, QA/testing, cloud operations, helpdesk, and managed infrastructure. These services are ideal for outsourcing because they’re ongoing, measurable, and benefit from economies of scale.
What are the three types of outsourcing?
The three types of outsourcing are: onshore (same country), nearshore (neighbouring or close time zone region), and offshore (distant country, often with lower labour costs). Africa often sits between nearshore and offshore for Europe and the Middle East, with good time-zone overlap and strong cost advantages.
What do you mean by outsourcing in IT?
Outsourcing in IT means delegating parts of your technology work, development, operations, security, and analytics to an external provider. The goal is to gain speed, flexibility, and cost efficiency while focusing your internal team on core strategy and differentiating work.
Which country is the tech hub in Africa?
Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt are among the leading tech hubs, thanks to strong digital infrastructure, government support, and growing ecosystems in software, fintech, and BPO.
