The City of Cape Town is excited to support Business Process Enabling South Africa (BPeSA), one of our strategic partners that is responsible for skills development in the Business Process Outsourcing(BPO) sector. BPeSA as a special purpose vehicle helps us to attract investment, create jobs and skills development in a key catalytic sector.

The City has co-funded this initiative in partnership with BPeSA and *WNS with a R3,29 million contribution for this BPO Work Readiness and Digital/Financial Services Skills Programme.

As an opportunity city we are committed to creating an enabling environment for economic growth and job creation, we have supported BPeSA for a number of years through funding for skills projects that will help to grow a skilled labour pool for the BPO sector.

BPeSA has done phenomenal work over the years to secure new investment for the city with major companies choosing Cape Town as a base for their operations. In turn, this has created numerous jobs for our residents.

The BPO sector is truly living up to the projections of being a key growth sector as 2018 saw a record year of close onto 6 000 jobs being created.

This work readiness and digital skills training intervention through the Ucademy learning accredited institution funded by WNS is further proof of all partners’ commitment to secure permanent employment. This programme will see 150 beneficiaries receive six weeks of training and a five-month internship with guaranteed permanent job placement and all together 1500 will be will be trained  the period of 3 years. 

In the current financial year (2018/19), the City has supported the following development programmes through BPeSA:

• R3,5million for an Impact Sourcing Skills Programme and Learnership for 154 beneficiaries
• Six week training and either a 5-month or 12-month internship with guaranteed permanent placement
• R800 000 for Connecting Management and Leadership Training for 25 Team Leaders, 12-week management of operational metrics training programme, and 5-month Personal and Team Effectiveness Training Programme

The numbers have shown that our investment has indeed yielded a positive return.

Since 2012/13 to date, the City has supported BPeSA to the tune of R24 million. In turn, the organization has facilitated investment of over R5,5 billion that has created over 20 700 jobs for residents.

For this period the organisation has provided 2 288 people with skills training and the three projects I highlighted will boost that number even more.

I want to thank and congratulate BPeSA and WNS for the stellar work they are doing in this space. Together we are indeed making a meaningful dent in youth unemployment.

The success of BPO operators in Cape Town is evidence to future investors that their operations will thrive in our city.

Cape Town is a high performance business hub and a globally, competitive business destination; the BPO sector is certainly one that helps drive that narrative to attract more investment.