Freelancing in the developing world
A global opportunity for skilled professionals
Freelancing is a global trend that is steadily on the rise — more and more professionals choose to start their own business and offer their services on a contractual basis. In developing countries, freelancing can prove to be an excellent opportunity for personal and professional growth.
If a country is devastated by unemployment, low wages, and a general lack of stable employment perspectives, freelancing can turn out to be an extremely good employment prospect. The freelancing ecosystem can be an exciting professional environment for motivated and skillful workers and, due to its steady growth, is always open to newcomers. Of course, freelancing requires a very specific mindset and know-how — once you start freelancing, you effectively start your own business. This requires discipline, hard work, and dedication, as well as staying on top of the latest trends in your field. However, given that internet connectivity is firmly improving all over the world, this allows people even from poorer regions to constantly improve their skills and to put their expertise on the global market.
The economy of developing countries is opening up to the global economy in a rather unexpected way — the income that freelancers bring in improves their personal financial situation, but also boosts local spending and therefore helps everyone around them in the medium and long term. These professionals bring in new skills to their countries, as they need to constantly improve their qualifications to stay competitive and to provide excellent service to their clients. These new competencies and the entrepreneurial mindset of freelancers become slowly re-absorbed into the local labor market and prove to be invaluable leverage for the improvement of the professional environment in developing nations.
The growth of the economic sectors related to new technologies is a key factor in the global economy. However, due to a lack of investments, these tendencies are often not as steady on a local level and do not completely satisfy the employment needs of the emergent nations. Freelancing, however, can allow people from these countries to work on technological projects from all over the world. Skills such as coding, social media marketing, cloud computing, User Interface design, data architecture, mobile development are extremely in-demand, and qualified professionals from the whole world compete on a huge diversity of technological projects.
A great number of people from developing countries are underemployed, i.e. work part-time jobs that are often insufficient in terms of income, and provide unsatisfactory professional perspectives. Therefore another extremely valuable characteristic of freelancing comes into play: its flexible nature. Working hours are not defined and each individual can work according to their needs and availability, which means that freelancing can be a side project, to fill in an income and employment gap.
Online freelancing platforms allow professionals from developing countries to compete on the global market and to work shoulder to shoulder (figuratively speaking) with their colleagues from all over the world. The competition in the freelancing world is fierce, however, the niche, the proposed services and the specific skill set of each freelancer are often very different, which is why there is enough place for everyone in the freelancing boat — for everyone willing to take the challenge.
