The year 2024 was a period of defiance. The spark that blew up into an inferno of defiance started with the violent protests by a youthful population known as Gen Zs who were enraged by what they saw as painful tax measures contained in the Finance Bill 2024. President William Ruto would later reject the proposed revenue-raising measures.
But before the Gen Z protests died down, they became contagious. Anyone who felt slighted by the slightest inconvenience took to the streets. It is this bug of protests that bit the ride-hailing drivers. In August, the ride-hailing drivers also went on a rampage, deflating the tyres of cars belonging to errant peers who had not joined them in the strike.
The drivers said they were tired of being exploited by foreign ride-hailing companies such as San Francisco-based Uber and Estonian-based Bolt, vowing to boycott their platforms as they worked on an application of their own.
According to the drivers, the constant whining about being victimised by these technology companies would only end if they set up their own companies with prices that favour them.
However, the drivers seem to have changed their tune, noting that developing such an application complete with features such as Google Maps is proving to be an expensive undertaking, said David Muteru, the vice chairman of the Digital Taxi Association.
“Drivers will go to that app (the local app). But with the giant companies like Uber and Bolt, you can only compete on price,” said Mr Muteru.
Mr Muteru noted that while drivers will charge a slightly higher price, scaring away the customers, the multinationals will keep the price low, which is attractive to riders.
“That is what creates the non-viability of driver-owned apps,” said Mr Muteru.
The drivers say they have changed tact and will from next year operate from organised groups the same way matatus (public service vans and buses) organise themselves around Saccos.
At the height of the protests by the ride-hailing drivers, getting into the digital taxi felt like getting into a police station. Crackling voices, similar to those that you hear coming from the police’s walkie-talkies, came from the drivers’ phones.
This was yet another inheritance that the drivers got from the Gen Z protests. It is the Gen Zs who first started to organise better through a digital radio application called Zello. Drivers, too, adopted this app, which the Gen Zs used to coordinate movements against the police during the anti-tax protests.
The anger against the multinationals, and riders, from the discussions on Zello was palpable. Drivers were advised to identify stubborn riders, share their details so that they could be blacklisted.
One driver this writer spoke to insisted that they would soon be coming up with their own ride-hailing app. The driver had boycotted all the foreign-owned apps, including Bolt and Uber. Only Little Ride and Yego, the only two local companies, were spared.
The drivers were incensed by how the algorithms set prices, arguing that the technology companies had rigged the prices to their disadvantage, in pursuit of more clients and earnings for the multinationals.
This belief about the pricing is the reason why some drivers were arbitrarily charging customers higher fares than what their apps showed when they requested a ride.
Not even the decision by Uber and Bolt to raise prices by 10 percent, which they dismissed as too little, appeased them.
Part of the reason for the drop in prices for digital taxi drivers was the fierce competition between the companies as they fought for a small pie of customers, most of whom still preferred to use public transport such as matatus.
The technology companies benefited from the volume game, but this was to the detriment of the drivers, who also had to pay for fuel and car maintenance.
But there were fewer customers, and most of them were grappling with the high cost of living. Many others have yet to be initiated into the taxi-hailing culture.
For example, most Nairobi residents (three out of five) use matatus as their primary mode of transport and walking as a secondary mode, according to a 2020 technical report by the German Agency for International Development.
The technology companies feared that these flare-ups, which included asking customers for higher fares than the ones set by the app, would scare the customers back to matatus.
But as the year comes to an end, the defiance from the drivers seems to be cooling. The talk of setting up a driver-owned app has been dropped in favour of forming a sacco akin to that of matatus, which provides several services including credit, self-regulation and human resource management.
By operating through organised groups, the idea is to gradually phase out the current independent contractor model.
“Once done, the management of those organised groups will have the capacity to give directions to the drivers,” says Mr Muteru.
