Category: English

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Rich Mallett, Research Associate and Independent Researcher, ODI Global

Digital labour platforms – like fast food delivery and cab hailing services – are having a dramatic impact on people’s labour rights and working conditions around the world.

In western countries like the UK and the US, their rise has intensified a process of labour casualisation already several decades in the making. Under the guise of “flexibility”, platforms have heralded a return to insecure, temporary forms of employment that offer few rights or benefits to workers.

But in “less developed” countries like Uganda, the growth of the digital gig economy is often considered a boon. Across the global south, it has been claimed that platforms are not only creating millions of new jobs, but they are actually helping to formalise an informal economy so vast it accounts for an estimated 70% of total employment in low- and middle-income countries.

Existing research suggests that by guiding informal workers towards compliance with registration and licensing requirements or making them more visible to state authorities, digital labour platforms are capable of “counteracting informal economic activity”.

But is it all as straightforward as it seems?

In a new research paper I put this claim to the test through a case study of moto-taxi work in the Ugandan capital city, Kampala.

Moto-taxi (or boda boda) work is a hugely important source of income in Uganda, providing livelihoods for an estimated 350,000 people in the capital alone. Over the past decade, ride-hail platforms have descended upon this vast industry, claiming to offer safer, better paid work and a step towards formality.

Drawing on 112 interviews, 370 driver surveys and scans of relevant media, my research reaches a different conclusion. Despite shifting online, digital moto-taxi drivers remain as they always were – informal workers in an unprotected labour market.

This raises fundamental questions about the capacity of digital labour platforms to bring about positive transformations in the global informal economy.

Fallacies of ‘plat-formalisation’

As the new paper shows, moto-taxi workers’ inclusion within the new platform economy brings them no closer to formal labour status in any meaningful way.

This is illustrated by three key insights from my findings.

First, despite early collaborative engagement with state actors, Uganda’s ride-hail companies have tended to operate in unilateral, platform-specific ways that undermine prospects for sectoral standardisation. Each platform enforces its own rules over drivers, and these do not always line up with government legislation.

Take driver licensing, for example. While some companies insist that drivers must have a valid driving permit before working through their apps, others bypass this requirement completely. Market leader SafeBoda, for instance, instead chooses to enrol new drivers in road safety training at a purpose-built “academy”. Though a positive step towards safer driving standards, this is not the same as formalisation.

Second, Uganda’s ride-hail platforms accept zero legal responsibility for the welfare and safety of those using their apps, including cases of “bodily injuries, death, and emotional distress and discomfort”. Despite claiming to help regulate the industry, these companies’ designation of informal moto-taxi workers as independent “gig workers” keeps drivers distanced from state labour regulation.

And third, my findings indicate corporate reluctance to share data with government. According to one city planner I talked with, while the platforms tended to talk positively about public-private collaboration, when push came to shove they would often “withhold their data”. Recent evidence suggests this is continuing to happen, further highlighting the limits of private data ownership and non-binding agreements around data sharing. Without access to this information, it is difficult for governments to register workers, tax them effectively and extend labour protections.

Profiting from informality

Ride-hailing may not have led to better, more formalised work for Uganda’s moto-taxis. But what is has done is open up new revenue streams for the various local and international companies involved. The result: a formalisation not of drivers’ labour but of their wealth.

As detailed in the paper, some of the techniques here include:

• Commissions. Drivers regularly lose 15%-20% of their trip fares in the form of company commission fees. With digital technology, these are increasingly being captured via cashless payment systems that deduct fees and other equipment-related debts automatically.

• Equipment. Many companies operate by selling drivers the gear they need to function in the ride-hail economy. SafeBoda, for instance, regularly charges new riders somewhere in the region of US$140 for a smartphone, crash helmets and branded uniforms. Drivers often take this on as debt and pay it back incrementally over time, only to later discover that this does not, in all cases, entitle them to actual ownership. As one former employee at the company told me:

The helmet itself is a business. It’s on the side, you can’t see it. The phone is a business. It’s about business besides riders. It’s all about getting commission on things.

• Corporate tie-ins. Through a series of funding relationships and “private-private partnerships”, Uganda’s ride-hail platforms make drivers visible and accessible to a whole host of banks, insurance agencies and alternative credit lenders. These financial actors are all keen to find lucrative new markets at the “bottom of the pyramid”. Ride-hailing is simply the vehicle for this.

The formalisation agenda remains important. It is central to achieving better working conditions and stronger labour protections for hundreds of millions of workers around the world.

But for private digital platforms operating across Africa’s informal economies, the bottom line is often not about “counteracting informal economic activity” at all. It is about profiting from it.

– Uganda’s boda-boda drivers: the digital economy hasn’t been the route to formal work and better protection – research
– https://theconversation.com/ugandas-boda-boda-drivers-the-digital-economy-hasnt-been-the-route-to-formal-work-and-better-protection-research-270993

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Adewumi I. Badiora, Senior Lecturer, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Olabisi Onabanjo University

Criminal activities have developed into a security crisis in Nigeria. Alongside the responses of security agencies such as the police and military, there has been a huge local response, with community groups mobilising in the face of criminal attacks.

For example, communities in Zamfara State, north-west region, repelled a bandit attack, causing the death of 37 bandits in August 2024. In Sokoto State, north-west region, residents rescued kidnapped individuals and recovered the body of the deceased village head in August 2024. In Kwara state, north-central region, community groups rescued people from their abductors in December 2025.

But how effective are these community-organised interventions?

I’m an urban and community safety researcher who has studied various aspects of insecurity in Nigeria, particularly in the country’s south-west, for more than a decade now.

In a recent paper I sought to answer this question in relation to Lagos. As Nigeria’s largest city with an estimated population exceeding 20 million, Lagos faces severe, complex crime challenges driven by rapid, poorly managed urbanisation and high unemployment rates. I surveyed 62 stakeholders in a bid to evaluate community-driven crime prevention strategies. Respondents included residents, members of the state and community groups who were playing important roles in the city’s security processes. This was qualitative research.

Many respondents expressed little or no trust in formal security agencies. Their expectations that the police could protect them were low.

A resident interviewed for the study said that while people like politicians got police protection, ordinary citizens did not:

That is why everyone has devised ways to protect themselves and family.

My research found that these commmunity-organised interventions have emerged in different forms. The commonest is community vigilante groups. These are self-appointed resident security volunteers who take it upon themselves to confront criminals in their neighbourhood. This is common in low-income neighbourhoods of Lagos because they have to deal with crime but feel they can’t rely on the police to patrol, unlike elite neighbourhoods.

A successful urban security strategy

Lagos community vigilante groups range from small groups of volunteers on streets, and informal neigbourhood watches, to well structured local community bodies. Community vigilante members are mostly men. But women are not explicitly excluded, and they are an important source of information.

The groups were using local knowledge to help the police. They compiled information on crimes, suspicious activity and criminal suspects in their area and provided it to the police as needed. In some cases, they joined the police intelligence response team to raid hideouts of criminals in their areas.

A resident interviewed for the study said:

We are local people. We know our community very well. We can easily spot strangers and suspicious movements. This local knowledge is what we have, that the police do not have. So, we complement their efforts by providing dependable intelligence for their work. Beyond that, we also escort police patrol, and our presence has helped them to penetrate streets they would not have been able to navigate by themselves.

The relationship between the police and community groups was “semi-formal”. Arrangements were made by the communities with little or no intervention by the state. The collaborations were owned, structured and sustained by residents.

Some of those involved in the groups were remunerated through financial contributions by residents. However, they “occasionally” received financial support from the local government authorities, individual local politicians and donors.

Successes

My research showed there had been some positive results. Residents confirmed that the collaborations brought safety to their community and had helped to reduce crime and insecurity, particularly where the police were lacking.

A resident interviewed for the study said:

Things are a little better. Before now, it was dreadful as criminals and hoodlums operate openly. Although there is still a long way to go, there has been a commendable level of improvements in our security in the last five years.

Some ongoing issues

Despite its success, several concerns were raised in my study.

First, community vigilante groups are a patchwork of isolated groups. Organisations are fragmented and weak. This could be dangerous because it creates unaccountable groups that can easily change from being protectors to being a threat. That can be seen in the Bakassi Boys (south-east Nigeria), Yan Sakai (north-west Nigeria) and global examples like Mungiki (Kenya) and Autodefensas (Mexico).

Second is the question of the legality of community groups in terms of the provisions of the Nigerian constitution, the Police Act and the Public Order Act. Their legal status is “complex” as they operate in a grey area. Most of them do not have the backing of the federal government, which has the constitutional authority to manage policies regarding them.

Third, while community vigilante groups fill security gaps created by an under-resourced police force, their activities sometimes lead to conflicts because they act as judge, jury and executioner.

A police officer interviewed for the study said:

The activities of vigilantes are usually unlawful in the way and manner they deal with suspected criminals … The lawful thing for them is to report suspected criminals to the police, but many times, they take law into their own hands.

Still, residents view the groups as legitimate because of their perceived effectiveness, deep local knowledge, community ties and quick action.

Fourth, relationships between community groups and the police range from amiable and collaborative to distrustful and hostile. Mutual distrust risks escalating violence rather than reducing it.

A member of a vigilante group put it this way:

We cannot totally entrust suspects and our community to the police. We have situations where suspects were released without any investigation and prosecution. Not only that, corrupt police officers do give hints to these suspects about key vigilante members behind their arrests, and these criminals go all-out for them after their unlawful freedom from the police custody.

Moving forward

To overcome the challenges, the following steps should be taken:

• reform of Nigeria’s security governance, allowing states to create their own police forces

• formal recognition and support of community groups

• adopting policies to curb the proliferation of the groups

• working more closely with community groups to deal with some of the underlying reasons for insecurity. These include political negligence, youth unemployment, poverty and inequality.

– Crime-fighting in Lagos: community watch groups are the preferred choice for residents, but they carry risks
– https://theconversation.com/crime-fighting-in-lagos-community-watch-groups-are-the-preferred-choice-for-residents-but-they-carry-risks-273667