French office services and call centre company Teleperformance has moved its Kenyan operation into the Centum-owned Two Rivers International Finance and Innovation Centre (Trific) special economic zone (SEZ), as it looks to expand its headcount threefold to 5,000 workers.
The SEZs enjoy special taxes and infrastructure to attract firms that would otherwise set up in competing economies.
Other incentives include special access to work permits or visas for foreign nationals up to 20 percent of full-time employees and exemptions on stamp duty, business permit service fees, import declaration levies and VAT on supply of taxable goods and services.
Teleperformance offers business support services for global firms, including data analytics and security, call centre services, interpretation and translation, recruitment, back office operations advertising, via and consular services.
The multinational’s latest financial report (for the global operation) shows that in the six months to June 2024, the company reported a net profit of €291 million (Sh38.8 billion), total revenue of €5.08 billion (Sh677 billion) and total assets of €12 billion (Sh1.6 trillion).
The company has been operating a business process outsourcing (BPO) facility in Nairobi at the Riverside Drive, where it employs 1,400 staff. The company said on Thursday that the move to Trific will allow it to expand the workforce, as part of a broader strategy to enhance its presence in the region.
“The fully built out site will have a sitting capacity of between 4,000 and 5,000. Kenya is seen as a favourable destination for outsourcing due to its workforce that has excellent linguistic skills and the ability to provide cost-effective solutions,” said Gary Slade, the Teleperformance chief executive of the UK, Ireland and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Kenya has emerged as a key BPO destination in recent years, leveraging on a large pool of skilled workers and the growth of SEZs that offer service providers incentives not available to other businesses.
The BPO firms have been eyeing a presence in the SEZs that have been set up to serve different economic sectors as part of plans to create thousands of jobs and facilitate export-oriented investments.
Centum’s Trific was given the SEZ licence in June 2023. It sits on 64 acres or more than half of the Two Rivers development’s total area of 106 acres, and contains grade-A offices, residential, hospitality and social amenities.
The company said the SEZ’s targets would include BPO firms, tech companies, financial services companies, professional services providers, accounting firms, NGOs, media and entertainment firms, hospitality and international law firms looking to set up bases in Kenya.
A Centum presentation covering the six months to September 2024 showed that the Trific SEZ had approved 14 licences by the end of the period, with another six under review.
