Project Digitisation, Research, and Technology Lead
USIU-Africa
Is the digital economy through remote jobs a gateway of opportunity or an illusion for global workers?
Like thousands of Kenyans, I lost my job a few months ago when the new administration came into power in the US and ceased grant funding and terminating thousands of contracts.
However, as the Americans, British, Dutch, Swedish, and others cut their funding of Africa’s humanitarian sector, millions may lose employment and saturate the labour market in search of alternate formal employment.
However, like most Kenyans who work in our economy, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) tells us that formal work remains an illusion to 75 percent of the youth.
As a solution since January, I looked to the Internet with the hopes of accessing the much touted across social media “borderless” opportunities of digital remote labour.
Can remote work for foreign employers really reap benefits in Africa and expand the demand for our labour, especially during politically instigated job crises originating from outside the continent? Well, what ensued became a crash course in deep disillusionment.
We always hear of the Internet being hailed as the great equaliser, a platform where aptitude and capacity is not restricted by location.
Even academically in my undergraduate and graduate courses we learn how the best talent bubbles up organically through virtual remote work regardless of our location.
My initial attempts at searching for online work, however, were confronted with a harsh reality that boundaries and bias really do still exist even in virtual spaces.
Platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, in opening the gates to international talent, still favour workers from developed nations. One needs to resort to using a VPN and pretend to be American or European just so they can browse high-paying jobs.
This is confirmed in an Oxford Internet Institute report that states 68 percent of the most profitable freelancing work is geoblocked.
Therefore, cannot be accessed through African IP addresses.
I also tried online Swahili teaching, which is a talent that is strongly linked to my African identity, the reception was equally lukewarm.
“We favour online tutors who have some experience in online virtual tutoring to North American audiences,” stated one of the rejection emails.
How does one, however, acquire experience towards Western customers when employers are not ready to try your skills? This kind of catch-22 reflects Kenya’s general youth unemployment crisis, whereby the African Development Bank estimates that 67 percent of graduates have barely any skills that are sought after by local or international employers.
Then, I frantically looked for other conceptually “easy” online digital revenue streams. Surveys paid a mere $0.02 per click.
Domain flipping, a speculative gamble, required payment upfront with no profit assurance. I wasted hours on survey websites for a week and made an insulting sum of $1.25, which is far lower than Kenya’s daily minimum wage. And domain markets are riddled with inflated valuations and legalities whereby one wrong purchase can bring trademark lawsuits from foreign lands.
These are not atypical difficulties. In a 2023 World Bank study, 41 percent of African gig workers earn less than $3.10/day, which is the international poverty threshold. The digital economy, it seems, is a reflection of the unequal material world.
The BBC even conducted an excellent special on how remote workers face unfair labour practices from foreign employers unlike those living abroad who have far more protections and income from doing the same work.
However, in much of the world, an unemployed youth often gets labelled as lazy or unconnected. But the problem is not one of a dearth of individual determination but rather exists as structural unfairness.
Online work favours those with access to a stable electricity supply, broadband Internet, and payment platforms like PayPal. In our own Kenyan infrastructure shortfalls, the Communications Authority of Kenya claims that 35 percent of rural Kenya is unsuitable for the work due to a lack of connectivity.
Even where work does exists, exchange rate differentials strangle remuneration.
Even when one does gain virtual remote foreign employment, the $15 to $30 per hour paid for a US freelancer would be life-changing to many youth in Nairobi doing the same tasks. But in our desperation, we still accept low compensation and create a financial race to the bottom.
As I now fill out my bare Upwork profile, I am torn. The Internet has certainly made millionaires of Kenyan. Our techpreneurs and content creators are proof of this. However, for most youth though, the online dream is a rigged game.
Is online remote work a solution to unemployment, or is it more surface-level and really cover up underlying structural failures? The answer lies in whether or not stakeholders choose to dismantle barriers or keep them up. Time is running out for Kenya's young.
Let us make the digital economy a right and not a privilege for Africa’s youth.
Further, our educational systems add to the problem. The ICT curriculum in much of Kenya focuses on programming and do not also include practical freelance skills such as negotiation, personal branding, or how to deal with global taxation systems.
According to an eMobilis survey in 2023, 82 percent of remote workers in Kenya learned through trial and error which is a time and money-wasting experience.
The crisis requires a debate right now for African governments. Can collaborations with platforms such as LinkedIn Learning or Coursera level the playing field for access to certified micro-credentials to close the experience gap?
How about debates for educators on how should gig economy readiness be incorporated into our curricula, with students learning to sell skills to the world from day one? Also debates for global corporations regarding will they pledge to cease geography-blind hiring practices and open up where talent, not geography, determines opportunity?
The writer was a USAid Project Digitisation, Research and Technology Lead at USIU-Africa
