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Telemarketing in Senegal

Wired News has a story on telemarketing in Senegal. Following in the steps of Ghana and South Africa, which have marketed telemarketing and phone support to the English-speaking world, Senegal is now marketing services to France. Competitive advantages include the neutrality of the Senegalese accent (which means that Senegalese telemarkers don’t have to take courses in Parisian French before getting jobs, though they do need to learn lists of French cities and towns) and Senegal’s fiber-based telecoms access.

I wish the Wired piece had dug more deeply into the telecommunications situation that’s enabling outsourcing. Senegal’s Sonatel is a near-monopoly provider, which dominates local access to the SAT-3 cable. While it’s great that PCCI, the company operating the callcenter is able to work within the Senegalese telecom environment, I find myself wondering what sort of deal they were able to swing with Sonatel to make such a business possible.