Slow Connectivity Undermines Freelance Boom, Outsourcing Ambitions

Aug 17 , 2025. By BEZAWIT HULUAGER ( FORTUNE STAFF WRITER )

On a weekday afternoon in Addis Abeba, when remote workers were buried in trans-Atlantic calls and racing to meet deadlines, software developer Oliyad Takele sat in front of a frozen screen. For four years, he has battled with an internet connection so erratic that routine tasks, from sending files and loading pages to joining Zoom meetings, regularly stretch into all-night struggles.

“The speed won’t even open a simple file,” he told Fortune, frustration etched in his voice.

The worst hours, he observed, fall between 4:00pm and midnight, when service collapses without warning. He has recorded speeds as low as 98Kb/s on Ethio telecom, the state-owned telecom operator. Safaricom Ethiopia, the market entrant since liberalisation began in 2019, offers faster service, but only sporadically and at a high cost. Monthly data expenses run him up to 3,000 Br, often matching average salaries in the city.

Freelance projects that were expected to finish in 45 days are now extending to 60 days, jeopardising income and tarnishing the credibility of the digital workforce abroad. Missed deadlines risk his income and feed an old perception among overseas clients that Ethiopian freelancers cannot deliver on time.

“I can't even have a Zoom discussion sometimes,” he said.

Oliyad is not alone, as the problem extends far beyond a single programmer.

Dagim Amedemichael, who has spent a dozen years taking remote contracts, recalls losing 600 dollars on a single job when the signal lagged and uploads timed out. He once froze mid-sentence during a final interview for a data analyst post, an opportunity he believes he missed because his line went dead.

“Most of my clients ask for screenshots of my internet speed before we even start,” he told Fortune.

Both Safaricom and Ethio telecom fall short of those expectations. When Safaricom’s mobile-money arm, M-Pesa, crashed last week, he had no choice but to limp back to Ethio telecom despite its limitations.

Elbetel Gebereab, a digital marketer at an outsourcing firm, recounts a similar shuffle. She hopped from wired broadband to wireless, from fixed quotas to unlimited packages, and ultimately settled with Safaricom. Even there, an annual plan ran out before the year was over, forcing her onto a monthly unlimited bundle.

“I thought it was normal," she said. "I just informed my clients.

The explanations seldom land.

“It isn't easy to explain to clients who don’t have experience with Ethiopian employees,” said Elibetel.

Those frustrations collide with big ambitions. Ethiopia’s business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is one of Africa’s fastest-growing sectors. Market tracker Statista estimates revenue at nearly 490 million dollars next year and more than 845 million dollars in 2030, with an average annual growth rate above 11pc. Today, the field brings in roughly 50 million dollars and employs around 25,000 people.

Melaku Beshah, vice president of the Ethiopian Outsourcing Association, whose 21 members range from call centres to software testers, calls reliable internet “the bloodline of our work.” Outages pound help desks, billing offices, and technical support lines in equal measure. Formed one and a half years ago, the Association now lobbies regulators and carriers for relief. According to Melaku, the push yielded one practical concession. Several companies have been “whitelisted” by Ethio telecom, giving them priority traffic during service dips.

“Dedicated firms in the ICT Park enjoy more stable global connections,” he said.

The federal government is betting on the same growth story, dangling incentives and partnering with the group. Back in 2021, the sector employed only a little over 3,300 workers and was valued at 34 million dollars. Contract offerings now range from cybersecurity audits and artificial intelligence (AI) tagging to mobile app design and graphic art, alongside the bread-and-butter tasks of customer support.

Big corporations feel the pinch as well. Mobile banking apps frequently fail to maintain a connection, frustrating both clients and commercial banks alike.

“This is not new,” Demessew Kassa, secretary-general of the Ethiopian Bankers Association, told Fortune.

The telecom sector liberalisation, launched in 2019, has produced a second carrier. Ethio telecom and Safaricom Ethiopia now compete for subscribers, and 5G was rolled out in 2023. Average mobile speeds remain 26.63 Mbp/s. A fibre-optic backbone of more than 4,000Km feeds the capital, complemented by Raxio Ethiopia, a Tier III data centre on the city’s edge.

Safaricom, four years after winning its license, reported that it has surpassed 10 million active customers within a rolling 90-day period. The company has invested more than 300 million Br in networks and digital finance, operating over 3,100 live sites across 150-plus towns.

However, the issue has persisted for years without a resolution. Tech firms suffer seasonal swings. According to Yilkal Abate, president of the ICT Association of Ethiopia, network interruptions spike during the June-to-September rainy season.

“Not all firms are tied to domestic systems," he told Fortune. "Many rely on cloud services, but those rooted in Ethiopia suffer most when outages hit.”

Some businesspeople, like Fikadesilassie Siyum, a creative director who co-founded design houses Jeba Studio & Kabo Communication, simply moved. He abandoned the Asko area after years of dropped links.

“One of the main reasons was the network,” he said.

In the Bole area, where fifth-generation service is live, Fikadesilassie and his staff now swap large files in minutes and hit deadlines they once missed.

Executives at Ethio telecom, which still controls the bulk of lines and towers, argue that demand keeps outrunning upgrades. Its Chief Communications Officer, Mesay Woubshet, conceded that casual users making calls or scrolling social media may not notice service dips, but banks, tech outfits, and outsourcers do. He disclosed a core project that is yanking out copper wires and laying fibre. More than 35,000 customers migrated to fibre in the fiscal year.

Abebe Ambaw, Ethio telecom’s chief service operations officer, observed that peak-hour traffic from 4:00pm to midnight shaves bandwidth for two to three hours.

“We're expanding aggressively,” he said, “but demand keeps outpacing supply.”

The company added capacity for more than 300,000 new fibre hookups last year, increasing the total to almost 952,000; yet, penetration remains thin compared to regional peers.

Copper still in the ground brings its headaches. Vandalism strips it from trenches in Kotebe, Yeka and other quarters, then peddle it downtown.

“There is even a market in Merkato where the wires are sold,” said Mesay.

Shortages of hard currency slow equipment imports. In Addis Abeba, fibre replacement goes first to commercial hotspots like Bole.

Unplanned roadwork, informal housing sprawl, and power failures that can last for eight hours or more add fresh challenges. Electricity shortages are chronic, compelling industrial users to experience approximately 39 interruptions per month, totalling 21 hours. Households often fare worse, especially during the rainy season. Grid failures in 2020, 2021 and twice last year blacked out the country for hours at a time.

Experts attribute the outages to ageing turbines, limited backup capacity, drought stress, tight finances, and, in some regions, security concerns. Roughly a quarter of installed generation sits idle because utilities lack spare parts and foreign currency.

Ethio telecom tries to compensate by installing 66 generators and fixing almost 200 more last year, and has rolled out solar kits to more than 140 sites. Over the course of three years, the tally of added or repaired generators surpassed 500. Still, even “unlimited” data packs come with caveats. Many subscribers “overuse the system” by sharing hotspots among multiple devices.

Internet use, meanwhile, is exploding. Ethio telecom’s latest annual report shows mobile-data customers up more than 80pc to 46.6 million, with traffic growing by more than 50pc. Data now accounts for almost a quarter of revenue, narrowing the gap with voice, which generates less than 29pc. For companies that need high-speed, always online, the surge has yet to translate into consistent quality.

Fourth-generation coverage now reaches more than half of over 100 million people. Each day, roughly 31,000 new users take a Safaricom SIM. Of the total, 7.1 million users utilise mobile data, averaging 6.5Gb a month, a jump of more than 50pc from last year. The company, however, declined to discuss recent service crashes and app failures that have been widely reported on social media.

Experts like Yonas Shiwaferahu see structural gaps. A network engineer at IE Technologies and a former Ethio telecom employee, Yonas believes that “unlimited” packages mislead buyers.

“They're sold as unlimited, but in reality they are not,” he told Fortune.

To prevent blackouts, he urged, the wider use of solar arrays and diesel generators, and insisted that backup batteries need real-time monitoring, an attention they seldom receive.

“Customer experience requires real-time monitoring and analysis,” he said.

For corporate clients, he recommends air-fibre solutions that beam high-speed links through microwave technology, along with tailored tariffs and incentives for outsourcers and their staff. Without guaranteed bandwidth, he warns, Ethiopia’s BPO dreams will come to a halt.

For freelancers such as Oliyad, Dagim and Elbetel, those forecasts mean little today. Until the country’s patchwork networks deliver unbroken service, their livelihoods and policymakers' hopes of becoming a global outsourcing hub remain at the mercy of an unreliable connection that too often drops when it is needed most.

PUBLISHED ON Aug 17,2025 [ VOL 26 , NO 1320]