Why do all remote jobs on the web mostly accept developers from North America and Europe?

I am a Nigerian who has been looking for a job for a while now since I had to quit my previous job and most remote jobs I find online are either only accepting candidates from North America or from Europe. Is there a reason for this? Tax issues or what? If it is due to tax issues then why do they accept application from other continents? What happened to Africa?

You can hire foreign workers in the US that work remotely without a visa. Most companies dont, though, it's risky and in many cases uncharted territory. There's international laws, intellectual property considerations, taxes, economic stability and infrastructure concerns.

And most companies here don't even hire people directly anymore at all. They instead have them work through consulting firms

Tl;Dr It's not an established practice among companies. There are easier ways to get people.

https://remoteok.io/
RemoteOK

If I’m honest - it might be cultural.
People are unsure how workplace culture and communication works in other areas of the world.

this will sound racist but it’s just me telling what I’ve heard:

A company in Sweden used to outsource to companies in India and China. (engineering, not programming, but still)
They said in China if an employee made a mistake they desperately tried to fix it without anyone noticing cause they were used to managers bashing mistakes.
In India people did what was stated in a spec, but if something was obviously wrong or missing they didn’t question it.

I think later they had success switching to Vietnam, and found work place culture and more similar to home.

Now, this might not at all apply to hiring a single developer - who you could keep much better track of them compared to a large set of people.

Just thougt I’d share what I heard.

@jiraTicket Ok this makes sense. Although that would explain why a remote job would be local to its country of origin.

It doesn't explain much about why jobs would be tied to two continents tho. I mean that's a wide array of cultural differences out there.

Although I kind of get your point.

@jbaba i guess us and europe are the two primary western areas. (No real reason to exclude australia though)

Might be a combination of familiar culture plus lots of well known software devs coming from these areas.