Cape Town Seeks to Emulate India’s High-End Outsourcing Push

Cape Town wants to break into a global outsourcing industry dominated by India, but it will require overcoming a vast gap in scale and cost competitiveness.

Officials and industry groups in South Africa’s second-largest city are pushing to develop global capability centers, hubs that multinational companies use to outsource high-value functions such as building systems for making trades and managing risk, and other sophisticated processes.

A construction crane near Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa.

Photographer: Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg

CapeBPO, an industry lobby group funded by the city administration, will present a plan to the municipal cabinet in two months to try and emulate India’s success by establishing hubs to support global companies, ...