Paper short abstract:

My paper highlights the significance of financial relations in the Kenyan gig economy. It examines the unequal distribution of opportunities and risks among Uber drivers in Nairobi and the role of formal and informal financial intermediaries. In so doing, it emphasises the role of debt.

Paper long abstract:

My paper highlights the significance of financialisation in the Future of Work in Africa debate by focusing on the booming Kenyan gig economy. It draws on an ethnography conducted before the Covid-19 pandemic to examine the unequal distribution of opportunities and risks among Uber drivers in Nairobi. It shows how, notwithstanding narratives of disintermediation advanced by digital firms, formal and informal financial intermediaries have emerged on the Kenyan market to provide access to cars and loans to struggling drivers. My analysis uses Maurizio Lazzarato’s notion of debt as a technique of power and Zenia Kish and Justin Leroy’s conceptualisation of ‘bonded life’ to argue that, while helping lower the entry barriers, financial actors raise the exit barriers for the drivers through debt.

This case study lays bare the contradictions between market-driven solutions to address unemployment and socio-economic exclusion and the entrenchment of pre-existing power relations. In so doing, my contribution critically engages with the political economy literature on the Future of Work in Africa by challenging the emphasis placed by both development and corporate actors on connectivity and entrepreneurship as key drivers of upward social mobility. Instead, it suggests that the Future of Work agenda is premised upon a process of subjectification from above in which the workers are constituted as entrepreneurs and disciplined through finance.