David Rickard - Everest Group - Elevate Ethiopia

David Rickard - Everest Group - Elevate Ethiopia

From CX Files by Mark Hillary and Peter Ryan

June 4, 2026 · 25 min · Episode 419

About this episode

David Rickard discusses the emerging opportunities and challenges in Ethiopia's BPO sector following his visit to the Elevate Africa event.

David Rickard is a partner at Everest Group. He is based in the UK. David recently visited Ethiopia for the Elevate Africa event. In this conversation with Peter Ryan David gives his take on Ethiopia and Africa more generally for CX and BPO. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwrickard/ https://www.everestgrp.com/ https://www.weelevateafrica.org/ --- Africa has been talked about as "the next big thing" in outsourcing for at least two decades. South Africa became a serious global CX delivery location. Egypt built a powerful multilingual BPO proposition. Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda, and several other markets are now attracting attention as buyers look beyond the traditional offshore giants. But Ethiopia is starting to enter the conversation in a more serious way. In Episode 419 of CX Files , Peter Ryan interviewed David Rickard , a partner at Everest Group , shortly after David returned from the Elevate Africa conference in Ethiopia. The conversation was valuable because David was not offering a promotional pitch. As an analyst, his job is to look at both sides of the equation: the opportunity and the obstacles.

People in this episode

Host: Peter Ryan

Guest: David Rickard

Topics covered

  • outsourcing
  • BPO
  • Africa
  • CX delivery
  • Ethiopia
  • business opportunities
  • challenges

Keywords

  • Ethiopia
  • BPO
  • outsourcing
  • CX
  • Everest Group
  • Elevate Africa
  • David Rickard

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Everest Group

Places: Ethiopia

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