America’s freelance economy is booming, targeting not only programmers but also the creation of web landing pages, other writing, editing, and similar tasks posted on job search sites such as: o deskand Elance.
But this is not a US-led market. Increasingly, low bidders from the Global South outbid U.S. freelancers by bidding pennies on the dollar for tasks posted on reverse auction-style marketplaces.
And it’s booming. Great news awaits bootstrapping professionals on one continent. According to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Africa experts, just a few months later he predicts that by 2015, Africa’s online job market will reach $5 billion.
That online job industry is a big one, with jobs from a variety of backgrounds ranging from creating a simple landing page for a small business’s website to a $15,000 consulting post to address the occasional back-end programming problem. It includes the work that people are involved in. The Freelancer site allows companies to post jobs, including salary ranges, language standards, time zone needs, etc., and allows contractors to bid on the jobs. Elaborate evaluation systems are in place for both parties, including online payments and contract completion.
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Let’s say you’re a furniture store owner and all you know about the Web is that there’s probably a site somewhere. All you have to do is post your job and budget on one of these sites and wait for the bids to come in.
Or if you’re a graphic designer with a passion for interiors but don’t have any connections in the field, this is OK. Check out Mr.Furniture Store Owner job openings. Your dream client has arrived.
Of course, a dollar has been around longer in some countries than in others, and India, or, say, sub-Saharan Africa, may be able to keep bids low compared to Western countries while still getting jobs locally. You can earn much more in bank income than you can earn.
According to Rockefeller Foundation research, the average Kenyan freelancer working for Elance earns $15 an hour (compared to the national average of $5 an hour). And according to Rockefeller, 60 percent of Africans who work through oDesk earn at least half of their family income that way (citing figures from the freelancing site itself). If true, that would be a lot of money to feed the local economy and strengthen the local professional base.
But all the online jobs in the world only work if potential workers don’t have access to the internet to begin with. In some developing countries, access to broadband can swallow up around 30% of a worker’s income. In contrast, in developed countries, costs are closer to his 1% of income. While Americans may feel unfairly treated by these overseas workers and their lower cost of living, the actual math is not so simple. What does a woman in an Internet cafe in Nairobi actually take home compared to an American woman, if only 30 percent of what she gets? Will the proceeds be used to pay connection fees?
As Rockefeller experts point out, another obvious downside to online freelance jobs is that they don’t include benefits such as health insurance that traditional jobs offer. . It ultimately has costs not only for workers, but also for society as a whole, covering costs such as hospital visits.
So can a massive wave of online jobs really save Africa?
perhaps. But now that half of the continent’s population is under the age of 25 and increasingly digital natives, computers may not actually be needed to force the future. This means that young Africans’ wages could increasingly be trickled in via gigabit.
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