In 2016, Nigerian Uber driver Ibrahim Ayoade co-founded Africa’s first gig drivers’ union, the Amalgamated Union of App-based Transporters of Nigeria. He has since advocated for the rights of drivers who work with ride-hailing apps like Bolt, Uber, and inDrive — from sharing their grievances on social media to organizing strikes and rallies to draw the government’s attention. Through WhatsApp and Telegram groups, Ayoade has gathered and mobilized hundreds of gig drivers in the country.
But he believes there has been minimal improvement in the lives of those he represents. “We have gone through years of struggle as African drivers and have organized ourselves dating back to 2016. But as ride-hailing unions and organizations in Africa, we are struggling to gain momentum,” Ayoade told Rest of World. “Our industry is taken for granted because we do not have the capacity to fight the capitalist companies we work for.”
Gig drivers in major African countries continue to make little money, there are few regulations in place to safeguard their interests, and security measures against crime are still missing, he said.
Most large African countries have unions representing their gig drivers. These include the Ghana Online Drivers Union, South Africa’s E-hailing Partners Council, the Transport Workers Union and the Ride-hailing Transport Association in Kenya, and Tanzania’s Communication and Transport Workers Union. In 2023 alone, driver unions in at least two African countries — South Africa and Nigeria — went on strikes, protesting low pay, substandard work conditions, lack of government support, and the high commission fees charged by the ride-hailing platforms. There were several similar protests in 2022.
But these unions have failed to replicate the kind of success their counterparts in countries like the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand, and Germany have seen, according to Shane Choshane, a researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand who has consulted with the International Transport Workers’ Federation. “If you look in the Global North — for example, in Germany — there is no Uber there because it was regulated,” he told Rest of World, referring to Uber being banned in Germany following pushback from native companies and regulators. “Currently, African unions do not have the capacity to take on companies like Uber. They are still far away.”
Representatives of driver unions in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana told Rest of World their members’ working conditions have worsened over the years. They said drivers are now frustrated because multiple negotiations with ride-hailing companies have failed to make a difference, and their governments are also not doing enough.
Ayoade said his union has spent years engaging with Uber and the government to request an increase in fares, but this demand has remained unmet despite rising inflation and a record surge in fuel prices in the country.
In South Africa, the E-hailing Partners Council has blamed the Department of Transport for failing to support the ride-hailing industry. It has also struggled to formalize itself as a union, citing a lack of support from the government. “We need full support from the government in our country because, as an organization, we cannot deal with the battle against ride-hailing companies alone,” Nomagugu Damba, the council’s deputy chairperson, told Rest of World. “Uber and Bolt have been engaging with government officials, but nothing is changing because our government is doing nothing for us as drivers.” Damba said drivers in South Africa have found it difficult to form a union as platform work is not classified as work under the country’s labor laws.
In an emailed statement to Rest of World, Lorraine Onduru, Uber’s head of communications for East and West Africa, said the company has engaged with drivers in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya in the past year.
“We believe that having a voice in the industry is important, and by engaging with drivers and their representatives, we can continue to work on providing better earning opportunities,” she said. Uber remains willing to meet with driver unions and associations who can put aside their “historical differences” and work together to improve the quality of independent work, Onduru further said. She did not explain what she meant by “historical differences.”
Uber’s labor practices have been criticized in many countries. In some cases, the company has faced government action. In 2021, the U.K. High Court ruled that Uber’s business model was unlawful because it employed drivers as contractors instead of making them employees. The same happened in New Zealand in 2022 when a group of drivers won a court case that required Uber to identify them as employees, not contractors.
In Africa, Uber saw government pushback in Tanzania.
The company suspended operations in the country in 2022 after being asked to follow a “fare guide” that doubled per-kilometer rates for ride-hailing companies due to increasing fuel prices. But in January, Uber resumed operations in Tanzania “after engaging with the government,” Onduru said. Local ride-hailing unions have raised concerns that the government is backtracking on previous regulations and leaving drivers out in the cold.
“I do not see the point of joining a union because they never helped me when I lost my car.”
The Ghana Online Drivers Union has struggled to get ride-hailing companies to pay drivers more than the current rate of 35% of the total fare. The union has also asked the government to remove the newly introduced value-added tax on drivers’ earnings, union representative Francis Kweku Tenge told Rest of World.
“We want the Ghanaian government to scrap tax from drivers’ commissions. If fuel prices hike, [our] commissions must also increase. Otherwise, prices of fuel must be lowered. The ride-hailing industry in Ghana should be properly regulated for drivers to earn more money,” Tenge said.
The South Africa Transport and Allied Workers Union has met with the Transport Department to push for better government regulations for ride-hailing drivers, Zico Tamela, the union’s international secretary, told Rest of World.
Some drivers in Nigeria don’t even see the need to join a union anymore. Oluwaseyi Abiodun Shokoya, an Uber driver from Abuja, told Rest of World he reached out to Ayoade’s union to resolve an issue with his car after it was impounded by Uber’s vehicle financing partner, Moove, earlier this year. But the organization was unable to help him in any way.
“I do not see the point of joining a union because they never helped me when I lost my car,” Shokoya said. “There are some things which unions cannot do, and some drivers here in Nigeria lack trust in unions.”
Ayoade’s union is now trying to garner support from global gig worker unions and uniting the various African unions under one umbrella alliance. With the help of the Solidarity Center in Lagos, it launched litigation in 2018 against companies like Uber, Bolt, and inDrive. The case is currently with the Nigeria Court of Appeal.
In 2020, his union partnered with similar unions from India, Chile, Malaysia, the U.K., the U.S., and other countries to form the International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers. Ayoade currently serves as vice president of the alliance and travels to several African countries to meet with union representatives and gig drivers, galvanizing them into action against ride-hailing apps.
Choshane believes African gig driver unions should work with established local workers’ unions to get the government to hear their demands. “They must team up with traditional unions that already have political clout to push for policy reforms and have regional and global reach,” he said. “Digital capitalism promotes individualism that undermines collective bargaining, so they must form hybrid organizations.”