ABSTRACT
Call centres have grown rapidly in South Africa since the late 1990s and are attracting increasing attention from policymakers, consultants and the media. The government introduced a support programme in 2006 for Business Process Offshoring and Outsourcing (BPO&O), which included marketing, easing entry for new BPO initiatives, investment incentives and support for skills development. The Industrial Policy Action Plan (IPAP), 2010-11 to 2012-13, identified BPO as one of the existing IPAP sectors where interventions are to be scaled up and broadened. The plan highlights the potential of the sector to ‘create 56,000 direct decent jobs over ten years with an increase in foreign earnings from the “exportable” services sector’ (IPAP 2 2010: 87).
