Dr Katarzyna Cieslik katarzyna.cieslik@durham.ac.uk
Lecturer in Human Geography
Offline contexts of online jobs: Platform drivers, decent work, and informality in Lagos, Nigeria
Cieslik, Katarzyna; Banya, Roland; Vira, Bhaskar
Authors
Roland Banya
Bhaskar Vira
Abstract
Motivation: The Sustainable Development Goals targets include decent work for all by 2030 but progress in sub-Saharan Africa has been slow. Over the past five years, the platform work sector (e-hailing platforms in particular) has expanded considerably on the continent, providing work opportunities to the growing urban populations. The quality of this work, however, is heavily contested. Purpose: We deepen and extend our understanding of the gig economy in sub-Saharan Africa and assess its potential for creating decent work. Our unique contribution lies in looking at the gig economy in comparison to the local threshold (the informal economy) as opposed to wage employment. Methods and approach: We first review the literature on the gig economy, the informal sector, and decent work in low- and lower-middle-income countries. We then draw on a case study of e-hailing in Lagos, Nigeria, to assess the sector’s potential to create decent work. We discuss our findings against the four pillars of the International Labour Organization’s Decent Work Agenda: productive employment, labour standards, social protection, and social dialogue. Findings: We find that e-hailing platforms may offer certain gains compared to regular taxiing in the informal sector but these are context- and platform-specific. Examples include access to insurance, credit, and cash transfers. Gig work remains embedded in the informal economy: it is unregulated and does not abide by labour standards nor offer social protections. We also find evidence of well-organized labour movements. Policy implications: E-hailing may be productive work, as platform intermediation facilitates outreach and matching, translating into increased wages. This happens with the added cost of longer working hours in the absence of labour standards. We propose exploring the role of digital records kept by platforms (e.g. income volume and regularity, or customer ratings data) to facilitate the progressive transition of transport workers towards formality. We also recommend fostering industry standards (such as fair work certification) to protect workers’ rights.
Citation
Cieslik, K., Banya, R., & Vira, B. (2022). Offline contexts of online jobs: Platform drivers, decent work, and informality in Lagos, Nigeria. Development Policy Review, 40(4), Article e12595. https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12595
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Sep 14, 2021 |
Online Publication Date | Feb 18, 2022 |
Publication Date | 2022-07 |
Deposit Date | Mar 16, 2022 |
Publicly Available Date | May 10, 2022 |
Journal | Development Policy Review |
Print ISSN | 0950-6764 |
Electronic ISSN | 1467-7679 |
Publisher | Wiley |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 40 |
Issue | 4 |
Article Number | e12595 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12595 |
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Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Development Policy Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of ODI.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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