East Africa is emerging as a vital hub for AI content moderation. However, digital workers in this region face significant challenges. They contend with low pay, job insecurity, and mental health issues, while the harsh realities of digital labour remain obscured by strict non-disclosure agreements and corporate secrecy. Trebor Scholz, the founding director of the Institute for the Digital Cooperative Economy Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC), shared his insights on these issues at the Digital Africa Rising conference in Mombasa, Kenya. His remarks highlighted the pressing need for fairer, more equitable digital work environments and the potential of platform cooperatives to transform the industry.
As a growing center for content moderation, Kenya is home to companies like Sama, CloudFactory, and iMerit, which partner with tech giants such as Facebook and OpenAI. While these companies employ thousands, the digital labour boom has revealed stark inequities. Workers experience low pay, job insecurity, safety risks, and limited career advancement, all without basic protections like a minimum wage. The Fairwork Africa Policy Brief emphasizes the concerning gap between the promises of digital labor and its harsh realities, calling for urgent reforms.
Can Cooperatives Offer a Solution?
Amid these challenges, Scholz and other advocates propose that Kenya’s cooperative movement could provide a way forward. Cooperatives, which are owned and managed by their members, have the potential to transform industries like finance, data labeling, and content moderation into spaces where workers can thrive rather than merely survive. This vision was central to the conference, which featured 85 speakers from 33 countries discussing how to build a fairer and more resilient future for digital workers in Africa.
The conference, organized in collaboration with the Cooperative University of Kenya, stressed the importance of homegrown solutions. Rather than relying on “plug-and-play tech solutions” imported from the Global North, which often carry colonial legacies and threaten local autonomy, the forum advocated for innovations that reflect African values of equity and resilience. Successful examples of platform cooperatives in Africa include Zenzeleni Wi-Fi in South Africa, a courier cooperative in Ghana, and Tanzania’s Enyorata platform, which helps women build credit histories through traditional savings associations.
Researchers and innovators are exploring how cooperatives can address the challenges of the digital economy. For instance, Katarzyna Cieslik is studying cooperative models in Africa’s tractor rental space, while Jared Mark Matabi envisions a Kenyan ecosystem of platform cooperatives in the ride-hailing sector. Michelle Lee examines cooperatives designed to support refugees, and Vangelis Papadimitropoulos is exploring open cooperativism. These initiatives underscore the potential of cooperatives to foster equitable work environments across various sectors.
Addressing Foundational Challenges
For digital cooperatives to succeed in Kenya, foundational challenges such as food security, education, internet access, and corruption must first be tackled. These structural issues are linked to the specific challenges of the digital economy, including fair wages, job security, and improved working conditions. At the Cooperative Stakeholder Conference, Patrick Kilemi, Kenya’s cooperatives principal secretary, emphasized the role of youth in advancing rural cooperatives through digitization. He urged universities to investigate cooperative digitalization further, utilizing technologies like mobile apps to streamline operations and enhance transparency.
Several potential platform cooperatives could cater to the unique needs of African digital workers. These include a cross-border trade cooperative for East African women traders, an African Fashion Cooperative, and a cooperative specifically for content moderators. Santosh Kumar proposed an African Fashion Cooperative that would unite designers, artisans, and workers in the fashion industry, prioritizing sustainability, fair labor practices, and African cultural heritage while leveraging e-commerce and democratic management structures.
Legal and Structural Innovations
One of the primary challenges facing platform cooperatives is the lack of supportive laws. In many instances, existing regulations do not permit cooperatives to operate in certain sectors or fail to provide parity between platform cooperatives and funded tech startups. This places cooperatives at a structural disadvantage. Additionally, cooperatives in Africa often carry reputational challenges due to associations with corruption and colonial histories.
To navigate these hurdles, Scholz advocates for innovative legal structures such as limited cooperative associations (LCAs), member-managed limited liability companies (LLCs), or distributed cooperative organizations (DCOs). These structures offer the flexibility needed for cooperatives to operate under outdated laws while maintaining shared ownership, democratic decision-making, and collective power.
