Expat or local contract for international candidates in Africa?

We notice recruiting all over Africa that more and more companies, especially ‘for profit’ companies, offer their new international employees local contracts instead of ‘full package expat contracts’.

Do you feel this is a good trend? This was a question I asked in the form of a poll on Linkedin a while ago. The poll had hundreds of votes and to be honest, the result kind of surprised me. We had some great discussions going on in the comments and about 50% of the voters thought it was a good trend and 50% thought it wasn’t.

An argument that was mentioned by the people that felt expats should get expat contracts, is that expats come in because their specific skillset is not available in country and they are there to transfer skills and in the end hand over to local successors. When offered a local contract, you will attract a different kind of international candidate, who might not be so interested in transferring skills or who has skills that might also be found in country. Definitely an interesting take on this development.

You can have a look at the poll on my and JobnetAfrica’s linked profile to see the full discussion and of course don’t hesitate to join in on the discussion.

If you would like to learn more about what kind of contract to offer your new manager, director etc., send me a message on inez@jobnetafrica.com and I will be happy to jump on a call.