Kenyan lawmakers launch stringent oversight of outsourcing firms

Kenya’s parliament is considering a new Business Law (Amendment) Bill 2024 to address worker conditions in the growing business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT-enabled services (ITES) sector. This follows a September court ruling that allows BPO workers to sue companies locally, sparked by complaints from former Sama employees who said they were underpaid and overworked moderating harmful content for Meta. 

Sama formerly provided content moderation services for social media platforms and AI companies. In a report by 60 Minutes, former Sama workers claimed they were paid just $2 an hour to moderate harmful content for Meta, a far cry from the $12.5/hour that OpenAI paid the company.

“If big tech companies are going to keep doing this business, they have to do it the right way. It’s not because you realise Kenya is a third-world country, so you say ‘this job I’d normally pay $30 in the US, but because it’s Kenya, I’ll pay $2,’” said one ex-worker in the video posted by 60 Minutes.

The revelation also highlights the realities in the job market for third-world countries where some foreign employers opt to find cheaper labour in Africa, usually to save overhead costs.

The disgruntled ex-workers have been arguing that Sama did not provide fair compensation, adequate support and protection for them, or protect them from viewing and moderating the depraved content that never made it to the internet.

The new bill seeks to force BPO and ITES employers to provide all necessary tools for their workers, ensuring that they can’t dodge responsibility by claiming they aren’t the direct beneficiaries of the services provided. It will improve working conditions and align Kenya with global labour standards.

Yet, as Kenya’s outsourcing industry grows, the bill could also push big players like Sama, Majorel, and Telus—that employ thousands of Kenyans—away. Time will tell if it sees the light of day.

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When the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) raised the capitalisation requirements for the country’s biggest banks in March 2024, it left them with few options: raise fresh capital, merge, or downgrade licences.

The apex bank directed banks with international operations to raise ₦500 billion ($295 million), national banks ₦200 billion ($118 million), and regional banks ₦50 billion ($30 million).

The banks instantly responded. 

Fidelity Bank, a tier-2 bank, led the way with wild marketing campaigns. “Own a slice” became a call to action as much as it was a promise.

Soon, other banks followed. 

Recently, tier-1 banks Access Bank, GT Bank, and Zenith Bank concluded their capital raises through public offers and rights issues. First Bank and United Bank of Africa, the remaining tier-1 banks, are in the market raising money.

As the FUGAZ banks—an acronym for the tier-1 Nigerian banks consisting of the first letters of all five banks—listed their offers on the Nigerian Exchange (NGX), sceptics, through X, ran polls to gauge the public’s interest in these offers. 

The numbers say yes. So far, Nigerian banks have raised over ₦1.7 trillion ($1 billion) from the capital markets, according to the Director General of Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Emomotimi Agama.

There is likely the investor instincts kicking in for many of these retail investors. It also shows that Nigerians will continue to invest in the capital market regardless of the historic scepticism and trust deficit.

It’s hard to imagine the world now without artificial intelligence. These days, it’s normal to read a news headline announcing the launch of yet another large language model (LLM) startup created to solve one problem or the other. 

Throughout 2024, different articles on the internet tried to theorise how pioneer OpenAI is shipping features at breakneck speed. It was a decade of LLM development happening in months.

While these startups have been responsible for “democratising” access to artificial intelligence, it has also given way to misinformation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) models are trained on large datasets collected publicly from the internet, where inaccuracies and data biases are rampant. Since there is currently no way for these models to separate fact from fiction, or verify information in their training set, they end up repeating what they’ve learned.

AI misinformation is generally a problem in different industries. But for VCs, the impact is profound as it can alter funding decisions.

Let’s paint a scenario: a founder fundraising needs information about their market to show investors the size of the opportunity and trajectory of the industry. They turn to an AI chatbot. Due to its lack of objectivity, the chatbot could provide outdated information or misrepresent trends in the industry. The misinformation can contribute to a funding bias.

One startup, StartupFuel, founded by Ashley Martis in 2017, built DiligenceGPT to help VCs tackle this misinformation. It aggregates startups’ data and presents it to VCs like a “report card.” It shows the startups’ financials, business and revenue models, traction, competitors, market barriers, and traction attained. With the help of two of its acquisitions, Uncrowd.io and Startifi, StartupFuel has access to startups’ data.

It recently trademarked its product name. And while the startup doesn’t spill secrets about how it built DiligenceGPT, there are some pointers that it considers the technology proprietary after it filed for a patent.

The AI due diligence market is one of those industries that have been impacted by the introduction of new technologies, so it’s difficult to estimate its monetary value. But StartupFuel will count its success on the fame of the VCs and accelerators it calls clients. Two of them, Techstars and Village Capital, stand out.