Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and

representation for

ridehailing drivers in

sub-Saharan Africa:

Pathways for trade

union revitalization?

Angela D. Akorsu

Department of Labour and Human Resource Studies,

University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

Jacqueline Wambui Wamai

International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW),

Sub-Saharan Africa

Akua O. Britwum

Department of Labour and Human Resource Studies,

University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

Introduction

As organizations with the mandate of representing all workers, trade unions are challenged

on two fronts. First is the challenge of fullling their traditional responsibility towards new

categories of workers, who are often in precarious forms of work and unrepresented or

under-represented. Such workers include migrant workers, informal economy workers

and platform workers. Platform workers, in particular, stand out, because a distinct feature

of the contemporary labour is it increased dependence on the use of the internet. This is

supported by app-mediated and crowdworking websites; hence the growth of the platform

economy. Platform work has arisen from the global digitalization of economies and is

creating new forms of work opportunities for youth, women and the disabled, especially

in developing countries with weak economies (De Groen et al. 2017; Graham, Hjorth, and

Lehdonvirta 2017; Vallas 2019). Nevertheless, platform work has come under attack for

intensifying the vulnerabilities of the workers. Platform workers belong to a broader group

of non-standard workers – especially in the global South – whose work is characterized by a

decline in (formerly secure) standard employment and a rise in informality, irregular work

schedules and the absence of employment and social security (Anderson and Huffman

2021; Britwum 2019; Vallas 2019). While this development underscores the need for voice

and representation, it also challenges the traditional ways of organizing workers for interest

representation, because of ambiguities about their employment status. In most cases, the

conguration of platform work evades the existing regulatory framework for protecting

workers (Rani and Furrer 2020). In addition, the dispersion of online workers across national

borders, especially for globally operating service platforms such as Upwork, inhibits

mobilization and undermines national trade union efforts and national legislation cover.

Second, trade unions are faced with an existential challenge occasioned by the constant

altering of the global labour markets. For example, increasing levels of deindustrialization,

the rise of non-standard and exible work through subcontracting and outsourcing by the

global North and the growth of the informal economy in the global South have meant a

constant reduction in union density rates in almost every nation in the world. The devastating

effects of the limited coverage include loss of union inuence over the past few decades.

Also, the insecurity that has come to dene work in the twenty-rst century undermines

the regulatory regimes that trade unions have utilized to organize and regulate labour

markets and employment relationships. These factors, coupled with internal governance

crises, have caused some to predict that trade unions have outlived their usefulness and are

on their way to extinction (Andrae and Beckman 1998). However, instead of sounding the

death knell for trade unions, Visser (2019) predicts four potential outcomes for them, one of

which is revitalization. With reference to the membership of the International Trade Union

Confederation, amounting to 207.5 million in 331 aliated federations in 163 countries and

territories, he concludes that trade unions are still among the largest voluntary organizations

worldwide – a fact that is hardly suggestive of outright extinction in the future.

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

Thus, while revitalization remains a prospect for trade unions, platform workers need

protection. Recognition of the representational gap among platform workers has given rise

to self-organizing by platform workers as well as the emergence of new players and non-

conventional strategies for interest representation. This unfolding situation raises questions

of sustainability and political ecacy, which has the potential to claim rights for the

vulnerable workers these organizations seek to represent. Most importantly, however,

there is a dearth of knowledge on the evolving pathways taken by the emerging actors

and their potential for revitalizing the trade union movement in Africa. This paper therefore

seeks to answer the following questions. Which other players apart from trade unions are

emerging to represent platform workers? Which strategies are such players using? What

are some trade union responses? And what are the potential pathways for revitalization?

The paper is structured in seven sections, including this introduction. Section 2 provides a

context for the paper. In section 3, we discuss the state of the literature on the organization

of platform workers and expositions of the future of trade unions. A brief description of

the method is presented in section 4. This is followed by presentation and discussion of the

ndings on Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa in sections 5 and 6. The seventh and

nal section presents conclusions and reections on these ndings.

Context

Uber is the rst ridehailing platform to penetrate the African market, and it still holds the

largest market share in many countries. According to Smit et al. (2019), over 4.8 million African

workers earned a living via digital platforms in 2019, and this gure is expected to grow as the

continent’s internet availability improves dramatically. The growth of the ridehailing sector

in Africa has been attributed to an increase in population, increased demand for platform

taxis by the rising middle class who can afford them, the convenience the ridehailing sector

offers as a way of coping with the poorly managed public transportation systems, and

the provision of jobs in a labour market with high unemployment rates, especially among

young people (Wamai 2021).

In Ghana, the use of mobile phones to access the internet has facilitated the spread of the

platform economy. According to Smit et al. (2019), Ghana has about 63 digital platforms

operating in the transport, hospitality, trading, agriculture and health sectors. Smit et al.

explain that most of these platforms are home-grown, while some have African origins, and

others have Asian, Chinese, European or American origins. They consist of platforms used

for shopping, making restaurant orders, using courier and logistics services and renting

accommodation. The largest and most prominent ridehailing platforms in the transport

sector are Uber, Bolt, Yango, Dropping, Swift Wheels, and Fenix. Uber began operating in

Ghana in June 2016, mainly in Accra, the capital city, and has remained the market leader in

the country.

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

The ridehailing sector started in Kenya with the launch of Uber in June 2015. Other

ridehailing platforms in Kenya include Little Cab, An-Nisa Cabs, Mondo Ride (Mare,

Chiumbu, and Mpofu 2020), and Bold (formely Taxify) and Wasili (Anwar, Otieno, and Stein

2022). However, Uber and Bolt are the dominant platforms there. Little Cabs was launched

in July 2016 from a partnership between Safaricom, the largest telecommunications

operator in Kenya, and Craft Silicon, a local software rm (Dube 2016). In January 2020,

Uber had over 6,000 active partner drivers, who offered 47 million rides covering 460 million

kilometres (Lukhanyu 2020).

Nigeria has experienced rapid growth in the ridehailing market, becoming one of Africa’s

largest markets (Muttaqa 2021). The ridehailing sector started in 2014, with Uber being the

rst ridehailing company to launch in Lagos (Meagher 2018), followed by Taxify, now Bolt,

in 2016. Bolt and Uber together continue to have the most signicant market share of the

ridehailing sector in Nigeria, with a presence in cities such as Lagos, Abuja and Abeokuta,

among others (Muttaqa 2021). The platform ecosystem in Nigeria is large, with 21 ridehailing

platforms operating by 2019, outdone only by Kenya in terms of the number of operators

in a single market. Locally built platforms include GIGM, ORide, Pamdrive, PlentyWaka and

OgaTaxi.

Controlling the operations of the digital capital market and its labour market is a huge

challenge for African governments. According to Gramano (2020), several countries have

yet to adopt governing norms and regulations for digital marketplaces, which are used by

the vast majority of their population and add to an already unsolved labour market dilemma

for African nations. In all these African countries, legislative instruments and policies are

not fully in place. For example, the Ministry of Transportation in Nigeria has developed draft

regulations on operational guidelines for ridehailing providers that were intended to come

into effect on 1 March 2020, but have not yet taken effect at the time of writing this article,

as negotiations are still ongoing (Muttaqa 2021). The draft regulation on the Trac (Digital

Hailing Service) Rules, 2020, is still before the Senate in Kenya, waiting for adoption. Ghana

is far behind in this regard. The only way to get state protection is for platform workers

to make a concerted effort to call attention to their working circumstances and demand

that their Government live up to its obligations. This requires them to organize for interest

representation.

South Africa was the rst country on the continent in which Uber was launched (Anwar,

Otieno, and Stein 2022). Other ridehailing platforms include Hailer, Uber, Taxify, Zebra

Cabs and Bolt. Uber, which entered the market in 2013 (Dube 2016), is estimated to have

13,000 active drivers (Anwar, Otieno, and Stein 2022). Taxify entered the market in 2015 and

re-launched its brand as Bolt in April 2016 to access a broader market. In 2016, Zebra Cabs,

an existing metered taxi company, adopted electronic taxi hailing technology to launch the

Zebra Cabs app, a direct rival to Uber.

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

Platform workers’ organizing and the future of trade unions

A common denition of the platform economy is the use of online digital platforms or

applications to deliver both tangible and intangible goods and services (Anwar and Graham

2019; Schmidt 2017). According to the ILO (2016), the platform economy includes a capital

market where commodities and services are offered, as well as a labour market for labour

services, also known as the digital labour platform. Web-based platforms that outsource

work to a geographically distributed crowd (“crowdwork”) and location-based programmes

that assign work to persons in a specic geographical area are examples of digital labour

platforms. Platform work, according to Prassl and Risak (2016), involves bringing owners,

users and workers together in a digital space where they build complex virtual relationships.

Running contracts are often predetermined by the owners and embedded into the

operating software, resulting in an inequitable working relationship. Payment methods and

working conditions are thus dictated by the application. Platform labour is characteristically

informal, with irregular work hours and a lack of employment security and social security,

raising concerns about digital employees’ job status and ability to defend their working

rights (Britwum 2019).

Much of the discourse on platform workers’ organizing focuses on the factors inhibiting it.

To begin with, it appears that accessing employment online and working digitally isolate

and disperse workers. This circumstance raises doubts about the effectiveness of the

usual trade union techniques for reaching out to workers. Also, the varying degrees of

ambiguity concerning platform workers’ employment status are restricting in the sense that

they deprive workers of any entitlements from platform operators, who would otherwise

pass as employers. Dølvik and Jesnes (2017) report that direct control by clients further blurs

the exploitative interactions between platform operators. Such ambiguities further limit the

use of legal instruments to defend workers’ rights. Thus, the protection afforded by labour

laws is not accessible to platform workers (Fabo et al. 2017; Daus 2012). Furthermore, in

many countries, independent or self-employed workers engaging in collective bargaining

to achieve higher wages are considered to be colluding and price-setting under competition

law, which impedes platform workers’ collective action. Regardless of these inhibitions,

platform workers do self-organize in response to their work-related vulnerabilities. Their

efforts, however, have hardly gone beyond effective mobilization and the provision of

welfare support to members – what Vandaele (2018) calls mere membership logic. Their

level of organization may not be sucient to allow them to ght for their rights in the

manner of ocial labour unions (Johnston and Land-Kazlauskas 2019). This has forced

some self-organized platform workers to seek aliation with trade unions.

The readiness, willingness and ability of trade unions in Africa to ll the representational

gap of non-standard workers such as platform workers have attracted many labour

researchers; for some, this remains a strategic solution to trade union survival. For instance,

Akorsu and Britwum (2018) have indicated that trade union survival is dependent on their

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

innovative response to organizing and servicing the unorganized and under-represented

workers. The ILO (2016) has already noted the existence of various trade unions’ attempts

to engage platform workers to broaden representation and various union techniques.

Three approaches emerge in respect of unions’ efforts for the organizing of platform

workers which, according to Johnston and Land-Kazlauskas (2019), consist of: (1) developing

alliances and organizations, whose primary goal is to supply and enhance services to digital

platform workers while also lobbying on their behalf; (2) employing legal techniques and

provisions to overcome or correct the misclassication claimed by platform workers; and

(3) advocating for regulatory and legal reforms and for a policy framework that promotes

platform workers’ collective bargaining rights and organization. This shows that, with the

right design, a digital platform labour force may be used to support worker organization and

representation and help workers to connect, collectivize and share information (Johnston

and Land-Kazlauskas 2019).

The unions’ efforts to organize digital employees are bolstered by their previous experience

in organizing and representing people in non-traditional jobs. According to Pulignano,

Gervasi, and de Franceschi (2015), most of the unions that lead the organization and

representation of digital platform workers have a history of including non-standard workers

in their ranks. Such unions have redesigned their internal representative procedures to

make it easier for non-standard workers to join (Lamptey and Debrah, 2020). They have

also devised new organizational techniques and cut costs to make it easier to extend

membership to platform workers (Heery 2015; Simms, Holgate, and Heery 2012). This

insight demonstrates that organizing platform workers is not an insurmountable challenge

for the labour movement.

Although unions play a key role in contesting worker misclassication, most of such

contestations have taken the form of class action lawsuits (ILO 2016; Daus 2012). Most of

these lawsuits provide fertile ground for digital platform workers to collectively organize

and bargain for social protection and other advantages that come with being classed as

an employee (Griswold 2019). This has occasioned the emergence of lawyers as players

in protecting workers. Associated with the platform workers’ representational gap is the

emergence of new players and mechanisms to produce and channel such voices. For a long

while, trade unions have offered a solution to this, but now they nd themselves competing

and losing to alternatives which also offer their solutions. Furthermore, there have even

been suggestions that trade unions may not always be advantageous to platform workers

because the perceived benets of unionization would not balance the risks of job loss

(Anderson and Huffman 2021; Wood, Lehdonvirta, and Graham 2018) and/or because, in

some cases, unions may be unsuitable matches for some issues. Under such circumstances,

guilds have been shown to meet the needs of specic categories of workers and address

their needs eciently and more effectively.

The above discussions underscore the importance of highlighting the writing of Visser (2019)

on the four possible futures for trade unions – marginalization, dualization, substitution and

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

revitalization. We nd this a useful framework for analysing what the various responses to

organizing by platform workers could mean for trade unions on the African continent. By

marginalization, Visser refers to the possibility that trade unions may be relegated to playing

only a minor role in representing workers because of low coverage, and may eventually be

rendered irrelevant to workers altogether. The dualization future refers to the potential of

trade unions to prioritize the needs of their few members at the expense of non-standard

workers as a matter of necessity, although this would be detrimental to their “equal rights”

ideals. The substitution future portrays the probability that trade unions will be replaced by

other forms of social action and representation. According to Visser, this is different from

marginalization, because it does not undermine worker representation. The fourth future

Visser presents is revitalization which, according to him, does not necessarily mean a return

to the past, but regaining trade unions’ vitality by doing things differently to reach the new

unstable workforce in the digital economy with fewer resources.

Data sources and methodology

To achieve this paper’s objectives, four African countries, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South

Africa, were selected for the study. The authors’ interest in these countries is informed

not only by their similarities, but also by their differences. Geographically, although these

countries span West, East and Southern Africa, with unique cultural differences, they

share similar historical experiences as former colonies and are victims of the post-colonial

liberalization with the associated growth of digital platforms. However, most important

for this paper are the labour responses to the negative effects of digital platforms in

these countries. Next, a review of secondary sources was conducted. First, this provided

an overview of the state of the literature, which is necessary for avoiding duplication and

providing pointers to the conceptual focus of this paper. Second, the review served as the

data source for the paper. Both published and unpublished written materials were analysed.

These included books, journal articles, working papers, research reports and newspaper

reports. Some positivists have critiqued document analysis on epistemological grounds

as an unscientic criterion for understanding (Bryant 2000). However, secondary sources

often serve as documentation of the results of scientic processes. For this study, a search

was conducted using Elsevier’s Scopus citation database of peer-reviewed literature, in the

interests of quality assurance. The inclusion criteria focused on the existence of scientically

obtained empirical evidence for the four countries of interest. The secondary sources used

helped to ensure retrospective reections, drawing relevance from past experiences, as

suggested by Bowen (2009). The analytical technique used is content analysis, which is most

suitable for textual data and allows for evaluative comparisons of materials with established

goals (Stemler 2015).

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

The players representing platform workers in

sub-Saharan Africa

Different national and international players are working to defend, advance and chart the

rights of ridehailing workers. These include civil society organizations, law rms, trade

unions, state institutions, employers and academia (see table below for examples). The

emergence of legal rms as important players in the ridehailing space is occurring as part of

the digital transformation. Notably, this new development is a response to the uniqueness

of ridehailing, with its employment status contestations and the use of legal suits as a

strategic tool. In respect of trade unions, this may seem to point to the substitution future

predicted by Visser (2019), but we argue that this is not inevitable for two reasons. First,

legal rms largely have a prot motive. Apart from International Lawyers Assisting Workers

Network (ILAW), which offers legal aid pro bono, it is unclear whether other legal players

would provide such assistance for long. Second, it is implausible that legal rms will move

beyond misclassication contests to provide broader worker services and representation

comparable to those provided by trade unions in terms of magnitude and resilience.

Players Actions

Drivers’ self-organized associations Mobilization and welfare support for

members

National trade unions

Trades Union Congress (TUC), Ghana

Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU-K), Kenya

Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Nigeria

Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU),

South Africa

Alliances and aliation status

Global trade unions

International Transport Workers’ Federation

Financial support to national unions

for the support of the aliated

associations

International civil society organizations

Solidarity Center

Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

Fairwork project

International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network

Financial and technical support for

research, strategic litigation advocacy

and training

State institutions

In Ghana: Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA),

Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), ministries of

transport and of communication

In South Africa: the Commission for Conciliation,

Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA)

Legislative instruments and policies/

legislative protection

X Profile of players in the organizational stories of ridehailing drivers in Africa

International Journal of Labour Research • Volume 11, Issues 1-2 (2022)

Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

Players Actions

Law rms

Mbuyisa Moleele Attorneys, Johannesburg, South Africa

Leigh Day, United Kingdom of Great Britain and

Northern Ireland

Olumide Babalola LP, Lagos, Nigeria

Provision of legal aid in lawsuits

Private businesses

Insurance rms

Financial institutions

Provision of health insurance for

drivers and credit facilities to purchase

vehicles

Granted, reports of legal suits concerning drivers’ employment status anywhere in the

world, regardless of the outcome, have been responsible for heightening the consciousness

of ridehailing drivers and have provided fertile ground for their self-organizing into

associations. Players such as nance and insurance companies are limited to supporting the

associations in their membership provisioning agenda. So far, the data shows that players

that have emerged to support ridehailing drivers in Africa are performing roles other than

the traditional trade union role and, therefore, cannot replace trade unions.

The organizing strategies

The predominant strategies used by ridehailing drivers to organize and to claim rights are

described below. The rst four strategies describe the cumulative actions undertaken solely

by the drivers to self-organize; they conrm the assertion that such grassroots associations

tend to focus excessively on a membership logic or welfare provisioning (Vandaele 2018).

However, contrary to the claim that this is often at the expense of deeper political action

to claim rights, the last ve strategies show traces of political action among drivers’

associations, which are largely supported by trade unions.

Mobilizing: Drivers in all four countries have used social media, specically WhatsApp

group platforms, as the strategic tool for mobilizing and facilitating group formation

among the otherwise dispersed drivers (Akorsu et al. 2020; Anwar, Otieno, and Stein

2022). WhatsApp platforms have provided an easy, fast and cheap information-sharing

avenue for the drivers.

Recognition: In Ghana, registration – getting the association duly registered with the

Ghana Registrar General’s Department – is used by drivers as a strategic tool for

recognition by the State (Akorsu et al. 2020). We also found that the National Union

of Professional App-based Transport Workers in Nigeria sought recognition through

registration.

The law rm is handling a court of appeal case on Oladayo Olatunji v. Uber Technologies & 2 Ors. The case is

supported by ILAW.

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Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

Commitment: Akorsu et al. (2020) report how drivers in Ghana have used nancial

contributions as a strategic tool for fostering members’ commitment to the grassroots

associations. The logic is that drivers’ nancial investment will give them a greater stake

in working towards its success.

Relevance: Welfare provisioning is a strategic tool used by drivers to prove their relevance

to the members. The exigencies of survival characteristic of ridehailing make immediate

attention to welfare needs paramount, and these override other needs in the interim.

For example, the use of the associations as a form of cooperative for car ownership is

most appealing to drivers in Ghana. In South Africa, some associations have worked

with external stakeholders, for example, insurance companies and nance institutions,

that facilitate the provision of loans to drivers wishing to buy cars. According to the

authors, these strategies ensure the relevance of the groups to the members and

facilitate organizing (Akorsu et al. 2020; Heeks et al. 2021).

Litigation has been used in three of the countries (not Ghana) as a tool for gaining

political inuence. Legal suits, with their great potential to offer institutional power to

drivers, have mainly focused on their employment status and have been mixed in their

outcomes. For example, a case against Uber in Kenya was led by a public transport

business and 33 individual Uber drivers. In Nigeria, there are two cases in court, one

in the court of appeal led by drivers against Uber and Bolt, while the other is led by

individual drivers and the National Union of Professional App-based Transport Workers.

In South Africa, the case against Uber was led by the South African Transport and Allied

Workers Union, the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers and individual

drivers. Here we see a mix of driver initiatives and union action.

Union aliation: For drivers, this constitutes a critical strategic tool for gaining political

inuence. Drivers initiated the aliation process based on the recognition that union

aliation will potentially offer them the political inuence they require in advancing

and protecting their rights. This is something drivers could not achieve on their own.

The National Alliance of Digital Drivers Unions (NADDU) in Ghana is a registered union

of ridehailing drivers aliated to the TUC (Akorsu et al. 2020). The Transport and

Allied Workers’ Union (TAWU) of Kenya is a registered union aliated with COTU-K

and the International Transport Federation (Webster and Masikane 2021). The positive

responses of the TUC and COTU-K in granting aliation status to drivers’ associations

speak to the willingness and preparedness of African trade unions to either support or

incorporate such non-standard workers into their union structures. This seems the most

promising pathway for trade union revitalization.

Coalition formation as a strategy to strengthen political inuence has been observed

since drivers witnessed how fragmentation undermines rights-claiming efforts. Wamai

(2021) reports that on occasion, in Kenya, drivers were represented by three different

associations and could not agree on which of them should sign a memorandum

of understanding; they eventually agreed to sign under the unregistered name of

Digital Taxi Forum. In Ghana, NADDU was formed from 16 associations, following

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Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

recommendations from the TUC; efforts to create a transnational body are under way

(Akorsu et al. 2020; Fairwork 2021). While coalitions of drivers’ associations contribute

to seamless aliation to trade unions, they can also threaten trade union revitalization

when they grow into strong independent organizations; hence the possibility of the

substitution future that Visser (2019) predicts.

Strike action: Drivers have been used in all four countries to gain inuence through public

attention. For example, in Ghana, ridehailing drivers in Takoradi have embarked on two-

day strikes to ght for improved working conditions and pay (Marfo 2021). Anwar, Otieno,

and Stein (2022) report strikes in Kenya and South Africa, which led to an increase in

fares as requested by the drivers. Nigerian drivers have resorted to strike action against

other discriminatory policies, such as the new legislation policies that restrict the age

of cars that can be used for ridehailing and require already active drivers to pay for

new permits to drive on Uber (Anwar, Otieno, and Stein 2022). Wamai (2021) reports

an 11-day strike organized by the Digital Taxi Association of Kenya, the Public Transport

Operators Union and Ride Share SACCO in Kenya. Generally, though, the protests have

not been successful in terms of rights-claiming, but have given publicity to the workers’

concerns and jolted the Government into starting some policy discussions on protecting

these workers. This shows that using the traditional trade union strategy of strikes alone

will not suce for rights-claiming: trade union interventions are still needed.

Social dialogue has been identied as essential in getting workers’ demands met. For

instance, in Kenya, a memorandum of understanding was concluded between platform

workers and Uber Kenya in 2018 before the Ministry of Labour. This led to the creation

of Digital Taxi Forum as a united mouthpiece for ridehailing drivers. In Ghana, through

dialogue between drivers, and later with the support of the TUC, the payment of an

additional levy to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority was curtailed (Akorsu et al.

2020). Here it can be said that trade unions are needed if such bilateral dialogues are to

progress to tripartite ones.

Reflections and conclusion

Much of the organizing among ridehailing drivers begins with drivers’ self-mobilization

and the deployment of different tools in pursuance of specic goals of group maintenance

and cohesion – a membership logic. This membership logic cannot be isolated from a

wider process of political inuence, because of its cumulative effect. Thus, one observes a

movement towards an inuence logic and the deployment of distinct strategies to evoke

political inuence. Within this logic, aliation with traditional trade unions has found its

relevance, agging trade unions as the most viable player in all the four countries. If this

review has revealed anything of interest to trade unions, it is the fact that organizing among

ridehailing drivers has opened up an offer of membership of trade unions – an offer driven

by the drivers’ need for the political inuence that trade unions have provided over the

years. Although the organizing strategies presented in this paper are mostly initiated at

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Voice and representation for ridehailing drivers in sub-Saharan Africa: Pathways for trade union revitalization?

the grassroots level by the drivers, they provide pathways through which trade unions can

support and formalize workers’ collective action in platforms to their benet. African trade

unions, judging from our review, have demonstrated by their willingness to grant aliation

status to drivers’ associations that they are well aware of the most viable pathway and

are poised for revitalization. We, therefore, recommend harmonization of collective efforts

and expansive democracy that resonates with the drive towards advocating “with” workers,

not just “for” support for all workers, especially vulnerable platform workers. Practically,

the aliation pathway suggested in this paper will, we hope, contribute to the openness

of trade unions towards inclusive structures that provide a platform where concerted

collective efforts for such a transformation can take place. Such a transformation, we insist,

is necessary for trade union revitalization on the continent.

References

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