Side hustles, side gigs, odd jobs... We’ve all heard, used, or even participated in these terms. But do we truly understand what they mean? What do they mean for the future of work, our businesses and our careers? Are there challenges we need to address? What are the opportunities we can embrace?
Over the course of this year, Rafiki will be unpacking various topics within what we believe to be the future of work, the freelancer economy.
The Original Freelance
One of the earliest known accounts of the word freelance was coined by Walter Scott (1771–1832), a Scottish historian in his novel Ivanhoe (1820) to describe a medieval mercenary warrior or "free-lance" - indicating that the lance is not sworn to any lord's services. Thus the word was used to refer to a medieval mercenary who would fight for whichever nation or person paid them the most.
The term, incepted in war, still holds connotations of battle today as many modern freelancers fight the line between financial freedom and freedom of time.
The term "gig economy" emerged in 2009, coinciding with the rise of platforms like Airbnb and Uber, to describe part-time freelance work, yet its roots extend to 1915 when jazz musicians first introduced the term "gig" to signify live performances.
Growth of the Gig
The actual enactment of the gig economy is nothing new. For centuries, people have been performing temporary or freelance jobs. What is new, is the technology that now underpins platforms that enable flexible work opportunities for both employers and employees. On-demand, efficient, cost-effective, and often far less risky, this modern-day workforce has exploded over the past few years.
A recent survey by Gartner found that 32% of organisations globally are replacing full-time employees with contingent workers.
This, coupled with the great resignation, and more recently mass lay-offs of permanent workers, predominantly within the technology sector, has resulted in rapid growth over the past 3 years. Resume Builder’s 2023 survey indicated that 40% of companies are hiring contractors to replace laid-off workers and 53% moved full-time workers to contract positions.
Skills Shortage in Tech
The world is experiencing a shortage of skills-specific tech talent. In the U.S. alone, there were 920,000 unfilled information technology (IT) positions and fewer than 50,000 computer science graduates to fill over 500,000 roles in 2020. In the same year, 79 per cent of CEOs globally had concerns about tech talent shortages, and 61 per cent of HR professionals around the world believed that tech talent shortages would be their biggest challenge in 2022. While AI and low-code tools have supercharged design and development at a fraction of the human capital requirements, a shortage in skills-based knowledge of these relevant software, processes and tools is still evident.
The demand to hire tech talent is expected to increase by 22 per cent between 2020 and 2030, substantially faster than for all other occupations.
An increasing number of companies are hiring engineers far beyond the cities in which they have offices and it is estimated that software development outsourcing will increase by 70 per cent between 2022 and 2023. Over 27% of UK businesses now look to emerging hubs for talent.
Africa’s Homegrown Solution
Africa is home to just over 10% of the global freelance workforce and is growing quickly.
One MasterCard Foundation survey revealed that the gig economy in Africa is growing at an average rate of 20% per year and is expected to reach a staggering 80 million gig workers by 2030.
In August 2022, Kenya became the first African country to make coding lessons mandatory in primary and secondary schools, a brilliant initiative addressing the outdated education curriculum and preempting the need for these skills, or at least a solid understanding of them, for competitive career development.
Freelancers in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, amongst others, are fast becoming senior experts in skills-based knowledge of AI, low-code and no-code solutions for fast, cost-effective and scalable product design and development solutions for startups.
In one of our next articles, we’ll be discussing the relevant challenges and opportunities for this freelancer economy in Africa. For now, we’re excited about the fact that this workforce is growing in expertise and that companies are increasingly integrating freelancers and contractors into their workforce on varying fractional bases.
If you’re looking for top freelance design and developer talent, fractional support for your startup, or you’re a freelancer in Africa, we’d love to chat!
Original source article here.
