Initiative is believed to be the first of its kind by a mobile network operator, creating salaried employment for visually impaired agents
Africell Sierra Leone and the Africell Impact Foundation, in partnership with the Milton Margai School for the Blind, have inaugurated the Africell Telemarketing Centre, a fully operational commercial facility located on the school’s campus and staffed by visually impaired agents.
The centre forms part of Africell’s core customer engagement operation. Agents based at the facility conduct telemarketing activity on behalf of the company and are employed and remunerated accordingly. The initiative is understood to be the first instance globally of a mobile network operator establishing a revenue-relevant business function within an institution for visually impaired learners.
The model departs from conventional corporate social responsibility practice in the telecommunications sector, which typically involves the transfer of funds, equipment or infrastructure from a company to a beneficiary community, leaving the company’s commercial operations unaffected. By contrast, the Africell Telemarketing Centre addresses a genuine operational need. Voice-based customer engagement rewards listening acuity, verbal precision, recall and patience, competencies in which visually impaired professionals are demonstrably strong. Africell has aligned this operational need with an underutilised pool of talent.
“People with disabilities in Sierra Leone typically experience lower rates of formal employment and educational attainment than the general population,” says Shadi Al Gerjawi, CEO of Africell Sierra Leone. “We are trying to change this by integrating a major cohort of visually impaired jobseekers into the heart of Africell’s business, giving them life-changing career opportunities while simultaneously fulfilling an immediate corporate need for Africell”.
The creation of the Africell Telemarketing Centre supports objectives already established under Sierra Leonean law and national policy. The Persons with Disability Act, 2011 prohibits the denial of suitable employment opportunities to persons with disabilities who hold the requisite skills and qualifications (section 19) and prohibits discrimination in recruitment, remuneration, training and promotion (section 20). The Act further provides for deductions from taxable income for private employers who engage persons with disabilities and who adapt facilities to accommodate them (section 23), anticipating an active role for the private sector. Sierra Leone is a State Party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Article 27 of which affirms the right to work on an equal basis with others.
The Government of Sierra Leone’s Medium-Term National Development Plan 2024–2030 places inclusive human capital development and job creation among the ‘Big Five Game Changers’, including a Youth Employment Scheme targeting the creation of 500,000 jobs. The Plan is expressly aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The initiative contributes directly to several of those Goals. Target 8.5 commits States to full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, persons with disabilities explicitly among them, and to equal pay for work of equal value. Target 4.5 addresses equal access to education and vocational training for persons with disabilities, and Target 10.2 addresses social and economic inclusion irrespective of disability. Goal 17 recognises that such outcomes depend upon partnership between government, the private sector and civil society.
The centre was inaugurated at an event held under the theme “Inclusion Begins with Opportunity”, attended by government officials, development partners, members of the diplomatic community, disability advocates, private sector representatives, school administrators, parents and pupils, and senior Africell management. The programme included performances by students and a talk on inclusive education, accessibility and the respective responsibilities of government, business and communities. The Milton Margai School for the Blind Live Band performed jointly with the Sierra Leonean recording artist Famous.