[tty]

>"A web and software developer in Africa earns from $10,000 to $20,000 dollars per annum whereas their colleagues in Europe and the US earns at least $100,000 dollars per year."

Either he doesn't consider Eastern European softwware developers as colleagues or he thinks all of Europe is London, which it certainly isn't. The upper limit he gave is more than most Eastern European developers make.

[atmosx]

In Greece PhD level programmers make from 25-35 EUR[1]. It's abotu 26,5k with taxes paid. It's extremely bad, but that's the Greek reality apparently and Greece (was supposed to be) in Europe last time I checked. A normal BSc programmer is around 1,5k/month. You get the (sad) picture...

[1] http://www.dotnetzone.gr/cs/forums/thread/34443.aspx

[roel_v]

"In Greece PhD level programmers make from 25-35 EUR[1]. It's abotu 26,5k with taxes paid. It's extremely bad, but that's the Greek reality apparently"

Uh that's pretty decent anywhere in Europe for anyone doing actual 'programming', i.e. not management or consulting, so basically meaning all junior- to mid-level software development jobs. I'm not even sure what 'PhD level programmer' means - it's not like 'programming' is an academic exercise.

[eigenvector]

OK, but this Greek programmer can move and work anywhere within the EU no questions asked, and that includes many places with better pay (among other things). Not so for an African.

[batoure]

sure the perspective is probably skewed, however the salaries listed are generous. I did some consulting in west Africa in the last 5 years and the majority of people working in tech and making 10 or 12k a year are only doing so if they are killing it.

The only people making more are working directly for foreign entities or governments and that is a very small community of people.

In reality most people I worked with were making around 1400 dollars per year.

[jonahx]

What type of work were they doing? Because even in the dirt cheap, cut throat markets of sites like vworker and odesk, a good web developer can make significantly more than that.

[batoure]

they are doing basic programming and database work for small banks and businesses. The thing that is important that he said is...

>Add to that, a good number of African countries have been blacklisted from PayPal.

I actually tried to set some friends up doing work on odesk and elancer. It is simply not possible this part of the world(west africa, cote d'ivoire, ghana, togo, benin, nigeria) is basically cut off from international money transfers unless you are part of a high income elite that qualifies for real banking. So they could do work, but would never be able to get the money.

[jonahx]

That makes sense... I wonder if there's an opportunity there for someone who is part of that elite to act as a go-between of sorts. I could imagine they have their payments sent to a PayPal in US or UK, etc, and then the account holder wires money to someone with an actual bank account in one of the countries you listed, who dispenses the money back in cash to the workers. I doubt there would be much money in it for the middle man, but the numbers you are quoting are right then that person would be having a major impact of the lives of those programmers.

[batoure]

yeah the problem is, that's pretty much what the point of sites like elance and odesk are, is to act as a go between and limit risk. So maybe there is just a niche for someone to cater to that area.