Filipinos - The Real Global Knowledge Workers

It always surprises me when, where knowledge workers, offshoring, and outsourcing are discussed, India and China are always mentioned. However, little or no mention is made of the Phillipines, a country that appears (to me at least) to supply the bulk of migrant workers globally, specifically in the technical areas.

From right when I was doing the NYSC, I noticed the seemingly huge population of Filipino labourers in the energy, aviation, and manufacturing sectors in Nigeria. Good English skills, good technical skills. Unlike Indians and Chinese, they don't really set up businesses but they take up employment, in mostly jobs that require some level of technical expertise. Not so much senior positions, but in the junior and mid-level jobs, you find them there.

On a recent trip to a couple of Gulf nations, I was surprised at the sheer volume of Filipinos I could find everywhere. It was like an Indo-Filipino race for domination. While the Indians were the labourers and taxi drivers, and generally did outside jobs, the Filipinos manned the desks in the hotels, restaurants, and shops. In fact, it seemed that every public establishment had at least a couple of Filipinos in their employ.
I asked one of my Arab hosts, and he said 'well, the Filipinos are smarter and cleaner than the Indians, and speak good English'. His words not mine.

Because we have a similar background to these people (history of misgovernance, large population of mostly youths, educated), I wondered why we seem to not have the same characteristics abroad. Even in the UK, or in the States, I hardly come across Nigerians doing front-office jobs, technical or sedentary. We seem to fall into the three categories of white-collar, trading, and under-the-radar hustling (drugs, yahoo scams and what have you). Not too many blue-collar Nigerians around.

So I did a little checking up, in the following areas:

Country Literacy: Phillipines is right up there in the 90th percentile (95.1% literacy level), compared to China (86%) and India (59%). This is probably due to the fact that the Phillipines was a US colony from 1898 to 1946. That definitely gives them the edge when it comes to foreign English-speaking jobs. Nigeria is rated at about 68%, though we have a larger population, 150m, as opposed to their ~90m.

Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_lit_tot_pop-education-literacy-total-population.

About 11% of the total Filipino population are migrant workers abroad, contributing about 13.5% of the country's GDP as remittances:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_Filipino. Now that is similar to Nigeria, isn't it. There is some World Bank report about remittances amounting to about $10bn from Nigerians abroad, though that would not be a significant part of Nigeria's GDP.

Technical Education: Just like in Nigeria, education is not doing well in the Phillipines. In fact, in 2005, the Philippines spent only about US$138 per pupil compared to US$1,582 in Singapore, US$3,728 in Japan, and US$852 in Thailand. (source: Wikipedia). They are also not particularly supplying graduate students to other Asian countries, the U.S., or Europe. As per technical education, they seem to have a plethora of privately-run diplomate schools and colleges offering a wide range of vocational and technical trainings, from construction to automotive technology, to catering and hotel management. These schools are centrally accredited by a body known as TESDA in the Phillines. So how come they have a high literacy rate, and strong technical skills?

According to this website http://www.chalre.com/articles/SME-Filipinos_Knowledge.htm, “Filipinos speak better English, have a better customer services mindset and the cultural gap between the Philippines and Western countries is less. India is reported to have better technical universities but the Philippines is better in liberal arts, which is more appropriate for back-office processing,” according to Richard Mills, an expert on outsourcing in the Asia Pacific'. I find that particularly interesting. You could say the same about Nigeria in Africa. Or could you?


Outsourcing: Phillipines is already the 3rd largest outsourcing destination in Asia, after India and China. McKinsey data indicates 2003 outsourcing revenue from the Phillipines as US$1.7bn. India was the largest at $12.2bn and China at $3.4bn. This is old data, it would probably have grown a lot more since then. https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Attracting_more_offshoring_to_the_Philippines_1684

Long and short of it? I think the term 'Global Knowledge Worker' refers more to the Filipinos than any other people group. They are just about everywhere, they have a highly skilled and literate population, and they seem to be everywhere, in every industry. They may not have the volumes like India and China, but they are making their presence felt. And I think that's something we can learn from in Naija.