Bit Alliance — Bosnia and Herzegovina's Diaspora-Driven IT Export Growth

Bit Alliance is an association of Bosnia and Herzegovina's leading software companies, headquartered in Sarajevo, formed to grow the country's IT export sector largely without a dedicated government industrial strategy. Its own manifesto attributes the sector's rise chiefly to private initiative and diaspora contacts rather than the state-led cluster programmes seen in Romania or Bulgaria.

To grow Bosnia and Herzegovina's IT export sector through private-sector coordination, curriculum collaboration with universities, and policy engagement with government bodies.

The Alliance works directly with universities and government bodies to adapt curricula to industry needs, positioning workforce-pipeline collaboration as central to its growth model.

By 2025, Bit Alliance's 40-plus export-oriented member companies reported combined revenue of €80 million and around 1,800 mostly highly-skilled staff; Sarajevo alone now hosts about 100 IT firms with million-euro-plus revenues and nearly 4,000 employees. At the national level, Bosnian ICT-services exports reached €260 million in 2025, up 17% on 2024, with the sector citing close to 50% revenue growth and 1,000 new higher-education-level jobs over the preceding three years.

Because the underlying figures come chiefly from the association and trade press rather than an independent national statistics office, and because the informal, diaspora-driven model is not obviously transferable as a standalone government programme, the evidence is best read as sector self-reporting corroborated by independent trade coverage rather than an audited public dataset.