ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of South Africa's ITES industry, and explores different value chains of IT-enabled services to understand what sourcing modes give rise to regional value chains (RVCs) of services. It provides a conceptual background, methodology, followed by an overview of South Africa's ITES industry, and examples of RVCs leading to an extension of modes of outsourcing/offshoring as currently reflected in the literature. The ITES industry has opened up opportunities for developing countries to participate in Global value chains (GVCs) of services without having to develop a full range of functional capabilities. Participation in GVCs of services is argued to be vital for their economic development in terms of diversification and sophistication of exports, access to markets, and considered an opportunity to add value to their local industries. In the context of outsourcing and offshoring of services, empirical literature on the opportunities of the regional market remains scant, especially with regard to studies on sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).
