[klaasvakie]

I can't really speak for anything north of the equator, but I have travelled fairly extensively in the southern half of Africa.

The impression I get as a visitor to many of these countries is that except for a few big cities it is just too difficult to guarantee power and telecoms access to bet your job on it.

Most people will find a job locally doing "boring" software since there is less risk. Working remotely for a company in the US/Europe requires them to understand your (african) problems which is always difficult.

If I am at the office and we have no power, my boss understands; If I am remote-working, will my "American/European" boss understand why I just lost a day?

The advantage of staying here (in SA) means that even if you are doing boring software, your salary is probably good enough to give you spectacular buying power compared to 99% of the planet.

As you move to more remote places, the salaries just keep increasing. I was recently looking at a job in Tete (Northern Mozambique) which paid around USD450k p.a.

So, I guess that doesn't really answer your question, but I think Africa is quiet mostly because the "boring" jobs pay disproportionately well --- the incentive to be an entrepreneur is mostly gone. (I say this as someone working at a startup of sorts)

[nabrielah]

I'm extremely interested in working somewhere remote/strange in Africa/other underdeveloped areas of the world (not even looking for anything notably well paying). I've tried a couple of times to search for relevant job boards and the like but haven't been able to find anything halfway decent. If you could go into a bit more detail about where one would look for that sort of thing/what the typical process is in that part of the world or shoot me an email at public at disastero.us, I would be tremendously grateful.

Thanks!

Edit: The bigger the shithole the better, really. I've been trying to find a method for searching for jobs in adverse environments for a while, but haven't been in any way successful.

[klaasvakie]

So if you want to move somewhere off the beaten track your job choices are going to be:

1) Mining 2) Power/Electricity 3) Support for the above.

Most companies don't hire in the countries they operate in, since the skills just don't exist. Most sites are populated by a mix of European/South African/Indian expats who are there for a limited period (typically < 5 years)

The way to get into these types of jobs is to get hired by the European or South African companies that operate in these areas, and then ask for placement at your shithole of choice. The current rule of thumb is to ask for your SA salary * 4 or * 5 depending on how bad the place actually is.

At the moment there is is a lot of activity in Northen Zambia (copper) with companies like Yokogawa/Siemens/ABB looking for people.

Northern Mozambique is pretty active (coal/gas) with Vale/Jindal being the major mining houses and ABB/Siemens etc. providing the tech.

On the power generation side - South Africa has quite a lot of activity on the renewable side with Spanish and Danish companies taking the lead (Abengoa for solar esp.)

There is currently also a bit of a power generation boom in Ghana and Benin, but I don't know anyone directly involved.

Most of the work is in hardware, project management, or process control though. It is going to be much harder to find software only work.

EDIT: I forgot to mention - there might be more opportunity for software only work in banking. I know Barclays is currently busy with a big push up into Africa, but I am not very familiar with that industry.

[tribaal]

A few notes/tips:

- If you live in a western country, try to get a remote job. Spend a few months in your remote position and see how you like it. If you like it, you can talk to your manager and ask if moving to wherever you like is feasible. Make sure you get good enough internet when you go, and learn enough about batteries and inverters to buy a power supply system (solar 12V batteries and a chinese power inverter will set you back 200USD and last for a good year at least).

- Send you resume to NGOs. Forget the startup crowd for a bit. Most people applying to NGOs are people with social/education/medical backgrounds, and IT skills are in very high demand, because nobody with IT skills ever applies to be sent to a remote place. I'm pretty sure almost any NGO will hire you if you can teach IT-related topics (programming, networks, systems...). Pay isn't great in general, but the experience makes up for it (also, the countries you'll visit are, by definition, not expensive to live in).

If you need contacts, I can give you some in Tanzania and Senegal even if my network here is a little more limited (finding my contact info is left as an exercise to the reader).

[simonh]

I used to work in the UK for a company founded by Mo Ibrahim[1]. I got to travel to SA a few times and to Tanzania as well as Egypt and various middle eastern countries, as well as Europe and further afield. Part of that company still exists under a different name[2]. There aren't a lot of jobs in telecoms in Africa, but the ones that do exist are interesting and will get you around a lot.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Ibrahim [2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtel

[tribaal]

I concur - setting up a power backup system was my first task when moving here (Tanzania), and it isn't a simple nor cheap barrier to overcome.

That is a pretty impressive salary, even for western standards! Maybe I should consider moving to Mozambique :)

[klaasvakie]

Tete is a shithole though --- maybe if I was young and single, but definitely not a place to raise a family.