‘Skills can make or break a business’

Local content is expected to be one of the top three factors to affect companies operating in Africa in the next few years. According to Deanne DeVries, vice president Africa for Agility Project Logistics, there are several reasons why local content has risen to the top of the agenda in recent times. “Firstly it has become law in many countries,” she said. “But investing in local content helps to mitigate risk and it enhances benefits to all parties. Ultimately it drives efficiency, reduces costs and improves project execution overall.” Ranking just as high as local content is the availability of skills. “In the project sector these two aspects – local content and skills – can make or break a business.” DeVries said the demand to employ locals had recently been increasing in the past five years and was now a priority for most governments who saw it as a direct employment opportunity for its nationals while it also fostered the development of local skills technology transfer. Corporates operating in Africa were increasingly aware of the impact of local content on business. “Needless to say there are many challenges that exist in implementing local content, but it does have major benefits to our industry in the long run,” said DeVries. Mahendra Dedasaniya, headglobal procurement and outsourcing for Worley Parsons TWP, agreed saying with large capital projects there are often many stakeholders involved and it is often difficult to bring all onto the same platform in terms of implementation of local content. “Also during the implementation phase of a project it is not necessarily high on the agenda of the project owners,” he explained. “It often challenges policies that are in place and more often than not one must remember that the project sector is at best a cyclical market so offering long-term contracts to local people is just not a sustainable model.” At the same time local content implementation requires knowledge and skills transfer to take place. “It requires cost, time and management effort that is not always easy to come by in the project environment. And over and above all these challenges one can’t replicate what you do in one country to another as the laws in countries are all different.” Despite these challenges, Dedasaniya said local content did make good business sense in that it enhanced a company’s reputation significantly while it also reduced social risk. INSERT & CAPTION 1 Investing in local content helps to mitigate risk and it enhances benefits to all parties. – Deanne DeVries INSERT & CAPTION 2 Local content implementation requires knowledge and skills transfer which requires cost, time and management effort. – Mahendra Dedasaniya