Africa’s growing gig economy: What is needed for success

Africa’s gig economy is growing at an unprecedented rate, fueled by advances in AI and emerging technologies, high youth unemployment, rapid urbanization, and the increasing demand for flexible work arrangements. As mobile internet penetration, smartphone adoption, and digital platforms continue to expand across the continent, the gig economy is offering new opportunities for income generation, particularly for informal sector workers, who represent up to 85% of Africa’s labor force. However, as with any rapidly growing industry, gig work in Africa faces significant challenges that need to be addressed for it to thrive sustainably. Moreover, while we understand some of the critical factors for success, there are still many challenges and unknowns that need to be explored and addressed to unlock the full potential of the gig economy in Africa.

The increasing adoption of gig work: Opportunities

Gig work is a short-term, flexible, task-based form of employment mostly mediated by online platforms, which are either web-based (e.g., freelance jobs, content creation, online teaching, etc) or location-based (e.g., ride-hailing, delivery services, home services, etc). The global gig economy market size was estimated at $556.7 billion in 2024, with Africa experiencing significant growth. A study of informal employment in the mobile industry  in Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda found that electronic retailing was the most prevalent form of informal youth employment in Africa. Electronic retailing includes selling mobile airtime, SIM cards and data bundles, and mobile money services, as well as retail trade of goods and services online. On the other hand, non-retail forms of work such as mobile phone repairs, content and application development, construction work, and network infrastructure are less prevalent.

Participants in gig work are predominantly youth, women, and urban workers. Several factors motivate their participation. Youth unemployment is alarmingly high (with Djibouti and South Africa hosting the continent’s highest rates in 2024 at 76.3% and 60.9% respectively) in a continent that has the world’s youngest population. Young people are attracted to gig work not only to earn income but also to learn new skills and gain human capital. Women are engaging in gig work at higher rates than in the traditional labor market, mostly because it provides the flexibility needed to balance work with school and family responsibilities such as childcare. Africa has the fastest urbanization rate, with 3.5% growth in the last 20 years, and a significant portion of gig workers reside in urban areas because of their relatively improved connectivity. In general, the gig economy provides a platform for micro-entrepreneurs to start and grow their businesses, offering services through online platforms that allow them to reach a broader customer base with no or little geographical restrictions.

The dark side of gig work: Challenges

Alongside the opportunities brought by gig work, there is a wide range of challenges that need to be addressed to ensure the success of the gig economy in Africa. Understanding these challenges as well as the gaps in knowledge about the sector is key to unlocking its full potential. One of the biggest challenges facing gig workers is the lack of job security and stable income. Because gig work is informal in nature, it often lacks contracts, benefits, and predictable hours. Without appropriate labor laws and frameworks, gig workers are often subject to exploitation, lower wages, and unsafe working conditions. There are also technological barriers posed by access to technology, digital literacy, and connectivity issues for workers, especially in rural areas. Recent studies in Africa and other global south countries have confirmed that platform policies and unpredictable demand lead to inconsistent earnings and an erosion of workers’ power to determine their rates and schedules (e.g. Wood et al 2018, Heeks et al 2021, Anwar & Graham 2020).

The changing nature of labor and skills also brings important data challenges and knowledge gaps in understanding the gig economy in Africa and its sustainability. Labor economists in Africa typically rely on data collected through household surveys, such as demographic information, socioeconomic backgrounds, and labor market outcomes. Yet understanding other likely implications of gig economy work—such as improving well-being, promoting social mobility, or bolstering skills development—requires assessing cognitive and socio-emotional skills that are more difficult to measure and often prone to misreporting.  Moreover, research on the effects of gig employment on Western labor systems will not directly translate to the experience of African countries that face different trends. There is therefore much to be learned about which models of regulatory approaches are best adapted to this context, as well as how informal gig workers compare to formal workers in terms of well-being, career satisfaction, and long-term success.

What is needed for success: Critical skills development and policy action

There are critical skills that are needed to succeed in the gig economy, both hard skills (technical skills such as coding, graphic design, data analysis, etc) and soft skills (including communication, time management, problem solving, and customer service). There is also the need to develop digital literacy, which is the ability to navigate and use various online platforms and the internet of things effectively. Gig workers must continuously adapt to technological changes, shifting market demands, and platform dynamics to innovate and remain competitive.

Anwar and Graham organize the skills needed for gig work into six broad categories drawn from data from the Online Labour Index. African gig workers primarily operate in writing and translation, followed by creative industries and multimedia and then software development. In order to better reap the benefits provided by the gig economy, the distribution of skills among African workers should continuously shift towards abilities that best match the local demands for hard/technical and soft/transferable skills.

While the gig economy holds tremendous potential for economic growth and job creation in Africa, many conditions and policy actions still need to be fulfilled or implemented to ensure its success. Some of these conditions include promoting an environment that ensures income stability for gig workers without compromising the flexibility that makes gig work attractive, designing targeted interventions that can increase digital literacy and bridge the technological divide that limits access to the gig economy for marginalized groups, and implementing regulatory frameworks that protect gig workers without stifling innovation and entrepreneurship.

Countries like Spain and Chile have seen conditions for gig workers improve after passing laws classifying them as employees of their platforms, entitling them to greater social protections and benefits. Such strategies could provide solutions to challenges in African countries where governments have struggled to extend social benefits even to formal sector workers, and where addressing high unemployment takes precedent over other priorities. Nonetheless, growing pressure from workers in South Africa (Reuters 2021), Nigeria (Dosunmu 2024, Salami 2025) and Kenya (Kuo 2022, Abuya 2024) shows the need for policymakers to understand and guide the platforms to ensure fair pay, transparency, accountability, and safe working conditions for gig workers.

Conclusion

The gig economy in Africa presents a unique opportunity to reshape labor markets and empower millions of workers, offering flexible work opportunities to youth, women and marginalized groups. However, to fully realize this potential, we must address the challenges it poses in terms of job security and income stability as well as the critical skills required to adapt effectively to this new paradigm. This also implies filling the data and knowledge gaps and developing policies that foster a fair, inclusive, and sustainable gig economy. Statistical agencies should integrate gig work data into national employment and informal labor surveys and develop standardized measurement systems. Formal protection of gig workers can be done by developing legal frameworks to recognize and protect these workers’ rights, while skills development programs can be initiated to expand access to digital literacy and vocational training tailored to gig work. Some platforms are already providing these types of skill trainings and support to informal sector workers. Lessons can be learned from these forays into protecting gig workers to develop an expanded, equitable, and diverse African economy of the future.