Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the extent to which digital labour platforms have reformed the precarious conditions of informal work in Kampala’s moto-taxi industry, arguing that their limited and ambiguous effects in this regard are also accompanied by a new political economy of barely-regulated extraction.

Paper long abstract:

Motorcycle-taxis are one of the speediest and most convenient ways to get around the Ugandan capital city of Kampala, but they are also the most dangerous. Digital ride-hailing platforms have emerged in recent years as a response to this, promising to create safer forms of work and transit through what their CEOs describe as a market-based approach to transport reform – essentially, incentivising compliance with safety standards such as helmet-wearing by raising the incomes of those performing this work ‘digitally’ and undercutting the fares ‘traditionally’ paid by passengers. Against a backdrop of repeated failures by state authorities to reign in a vast moto-taxi workforce long considered both economically marginal and politically untouchable, platformisation here has been widely portrayed as a step towards more effective regulation of the industry as a whole, with for-profit (social) enterprises and external venture capital now playing a central role. Through case study research, this paper / talk critically examines the promise of regulation-via-privatisation in this context by drawing attention to the ways in which narratives of road safety, sectoral reform and entrepreneurial empowerment are being used to conceal various modes of extractive engagement with informal workers at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ – through commissions, through data and through equipment. In doing so, platforms create new political economies of work within the industry that produce ambiguous effects on pre-existing working conditions and increasing levels of disaffection amongst the workforce, leading to fundamental questions about the purpose, extent and ultimately contested nature of the platform ‘revolution’.