ASSESSMENT OF BUSINESS OUTSOURCING CHALLENGES AND PROSPECTS: THE CASE OF AFRICA JUICE TIBILA S.C., ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Business outsourcing although not a new concept in Ethiopia, it still is at the very early stage of operating in the country. Offshore outsourcing particularly is a new and aggressively implementing kind of outsourcing in Africa, where Ethiopia is catching up, unlike countries like India, China, Morocco, South Africa, and Kenya, along with the rest of the world. The purpose of this study is to determine the challenges and the prospects of outsourcing business in Ethiopia by case studying AJ S.C. Ethiopia. The study has a descriptive design, Qualitative and Quantitative research method and Inductive research approach is used. The data analysis is conducted from the responses of 42 out growers, 280 staff and 10 householders. The technique used to select these samples are convenient sampling for the out growers, non-management staff, and the society; whereas, the management staff is purposefully selected. The finding of this study summarize the major challenges as: the country’s lack of recorded data on the business sector(being a very new entrant to the sector), Contract farming, a tool that prevents the foreign company from land grapping and that enables the local community to be benefited as much as possible, is still under studying stage,the out- growers being new to the passion fruit production, the training, advise, and support they require from the AJ S.C. is not to the best of their expectation,the sharing of the scarcest natural resource- Water is also another problem. On the other hand the prospect of business outsourcing particularly the off shore outsourcing is: it helps the society grow and prosper; it exposes the local farmers to the international markets. The study concluded that in order to be benefited from this new and popular business sector, Ethiopia needs to double and effectively increase the effort to attract foreign business outsourcing to the country by producing effective policy, collectingback log of data for reference, having functional contract farming agreement that can benefit both the company and out growers, polishing its political appearance in the eye of the world.