As the dust begins to settle following the Arab Spring in North Africa, opportunities for interim and contract professionals – and as such, recruiters – are already picking up.

Interim management provider Interim Partners says that the average daily rate for interim project engineering directors has pushed up from £1k last year to £1.5k in areas including Libya and Egypt.

Jonathan Mooney, a senior consultant for energy and utilities at Interim Partners, says: “North African governments are under intense pressure to grow their economies and cut unemployment – it’s imperative for them to get money into their coffers… Increasing energy resources output is the quickest way of doing that.”

James Allen, EMEA managing director at oil & gas recruiter Swift Worldwide Resources, tells Recruiter that Libya as a market has been “pretty much on hold” of late, but as the political situation calms, the region will pick up.

He does “expect serious growth” in the country, although notes that in this industry “it’s all driven by the operators in our industry”, adding that the Interim Partners suggestion of rate increases in time “makes perfect sense”.

In Egypt, Patrick Brown, oil & gas contracts consultant at recruiter Spencer Ogden, notes that its major clients in Egypt “are now back to working full speed as concerns regarding safety and security have died down”.

He notes: “We would suggest that the speed at which projects have returned to productivity can be related to their relative distance from major cities.”

Brown also says that in areas such as Libya, Algeria and Syria, where troubles have been more recent than Egypt, workers’ rates have “increased by as much as 25-50%, and businesses are happy to pay this in order to acquire international expertise”.

Mooney at Interim Partners adds that “globally there is an acute shortage of very experienced senior energy interims”, also saying: “While there are already many talented executives based in Libya and Egypt, for example, they simply do not have the strength in depth to bring their energy industries up to speed quickly without further help from overseas.”

He concludes: “Because of the extensive work carried out in the North Sea oil fields, the UK is seen as a real centre of excellence when it comes to energy production. Many UK oil & gas experts find the short-term, high-pay work as an interim in North Africa very tempting.”