During his United States tour, President William Ruto commended CCI Global’s new Ksh.6.6 billion ($50 million) call centre in Tatu City, Kiambu County. The president inaugurated the five-storey business process outsourcing (BPO) firm’s facility on May 10, which is touted as the country’s largest call centre and is projected to employ 5,000 Kenyans in the near future.
At a forum in Atlanta, Georgia, with Kenyans living in the U.S. on Monday, President Ruto highlighted the call centre’s potential to provide online job opportunities for Kenyans. He emphasized that this development represents a substantial opportunity amid ongoing challenges with unemployment in the country.
“The digital jobs space is what can give us opportunities for Kenyans to work. Last week – I’m not talking about last year or last month – I was in Ruiru commissioning a DPO that is going to hire 5,000 Kenyans,” he said.
“They are going to do online jobs at that BPO by CCI has JetBlue and ATAP, all American companies. Kenyans will be working from Ruiru for American companies.”
During the CCI call centre launch, the company announced the creation of a second building at Tatu City, with the commitment to double CCI Kenya’s call centre workforce to 10,000.
The firm said the jobs span across call centre agents to managerial roles.
Ruto on Monday further doubled the figure, saying CCI will employ 20,000 Kenyans by 2026.
“CCI in the next two years will be hiring 20,000 Kenyans. We are working with many of those companies to create such spaces not only in Ruiru but other Kenyan towns,” he said.
Since assuming office in September 2022, President Ruto has emphasized the digital economy’s role in creating jobs and generating revenue for the government. During his U.S. roadshow last year, which aimed to showcase Kenya’s thriving tech sector, he announced an agreement with Apple and other leading Silicon Valley companies.
These agreements would provide hundreds of thousands of digital jobs for Kenyans. CCI Global, which serves top companies from North America, the U.K., Australia, Europe, and New Zealand, currently employs over 15,000 staff.
These employees serve more than 80 companies across various sectors such as telecoms, media, mobile technology, financial services, hospitality, and healthcare.
“I visited Google, Intel and Apple. All these companies are looking for online workers,” said Ruto then.
Without getting into specifics of which corporation promised to employ what number of workers, the president at the time added; “They want us to give them 100,000, 200,000 and 300,000 workers out of the Kenyan youth.”
He recently said his government seeks to create a million ‘digital jobs’ in five years.
($1 = Ksh.131.19)
