Can co-ops address AI labour inequities in East Africa?

Dec 3, 2024

By PCC

Trebor Scholz, founding director of the Platform Cooperativism Consortium, writes from the organisation’s conference in Mombasa, Kenya

Re-Post from Co-operative News November 25, 2024

With 435 million people globally engaged in platform work, according to the World Bank, East Africa is emerging as a key hub for AI content moderation. However, the conversation around unionisation and community-owned digital platforms is only just beginning.

Kauna Malgwi, a young Nigerian and a courageous voice for the African Content Moderators Union, speaks with raw vulnerability about the haunting reality faced by workers: ”Every 50 seconds, we were forced to watch another piece of toxic, violent content – sometimes dozens of suicide videos each day.” These workers, isolated by strict non-disclosure agreements and relocated away from family and friends, have their mental health shattered. Their suffering is invisible, their right to organise denied.

Kenya has a thriving content moderation sector. Companies like Sama, CloudFactory, and iMerit contract with firms like Facebook and OpenAI, employing thousands to manage and filter online content. However, the boom in outsourced digital work has exposed stark inequities: low pay, job insecurity, safety risks, and limited career growth, all without protections like a minimum wage. The Fairwork Africa Policy Brief underscores the troubling gap between the promises of digital labour and its harsh realities, calling for urgent reform.

Amid these stark disparities, could Kenya’s co-operative movement offer hope and a way forward for digital workers? Could co-operatives transform industries – from finance to data labelling – into places where workers thrive rather than merely survive? This critical question took centre stage at the Digital Africa Rising conference in Mombasa – a city alive with the whispers of ancient trade routes and Swahili culture. Over three days, the pan-African conference brought together 85 speakers from 33 countries, filling the room with the energy of roughly 500 participants, all driven by a shared vision: building a fairer, more resilient future for digital workers in Africa. Convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium (PCC) in collaboration with the Cooperative University of Kenya, this marked the 10th PCC conference dedicated to nurturing its global community. You can access the Conference Programme, view the Image Gallery, or visit the Conference Website.

With the memory of Kenya’s fight for independence still palpable, this forum took a stand against “plug-and-play tech solutions” imported from the Global North. Such solutions, often wrapped in the guise of progress, can carry the weight of a colonial legacy and, if out of sync with co-operative values, do more harm than good – threatening to strip communities of their autonomy and identity. Instead, the forum championed homegrown solutions, inspiring young people to innovate and reimagine digital work in ways that reflect their own values of equity and resilience.

Showcased African platform co-operatives included Zenzeleni Wi-Fi, a care services platform in South Africa, and Ghana’s courier co-operative. Tanzania’s Enyorata platform helps women build credit histories through traditional savings associations. These examples, alongside global initiatives like the Kerala Food Platform in India, Tamsang-Tamsong in Thailand, PescaData in Mexico, and the prolific GrownBy in New York, highlight the potential of platform co-operatives to create equitable work.

ICDE fellows have researched co-operative solutions in the digital economy. Katarzyna Cieslik focuses on co-operative models in Africa’s tractor rental space, while Jared Mark Matabi envisions a Kenyan ecosystem of platform co-operatives in ride-hailing. Michelle Lee examines co-operatives designed to support refugees, and Vangelis Papadimitropoulos explores open co-operativism. Maïmonatou Mar investigates the creation of a platform co-operative for nannies in France, and Andrea Peña Calvin studies Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) rooted in co-operative principles. Cecilia Muñoz Cancela and Stefan Ivanovski highlight tech co-operatives and platform co-operative initiatives, Josie West addresses the role of co-operatives in supporting sex workers, and Alejandro Fortuny-Sicart researches CoopCycle, a federation of bike delivery co-operatives that offers an open-source platform to help couriers organise and manage their services collectively. Erik Forman reported from his experiences of co-founding the Drivers Coop.

From endogenous challenges to digital labour solutions in Kenya

Where should the work on platform co-ops in the Global South begin? For digital co-operatives in Kenya to thrive, foundational challenges like food security, education, internet access, and combating corruption must first be addressed. These structural issues must be resolved alongside the more specific challenges of the digital economy, such as ensuring fair wages, enhancing job security, and improving working conditions for the growing number of digital labourers. At the Kenyan Cooperative Stakeholder Conference, held before Digital Africa Rising, delegates infused celebratory energy into discussions about SACCOs, which hold 30% of Kenya’s wealth but have seen the co-operative sector’s GDP share drop from 48% to 2%. The Kenyan Cooperatives Act remains outdated, offering no support for the digital advancements outlined here.

Patrick Kilemi, Kenya’s principal secretary of co-operatives, highlighted the role of youth in advancing rural co-operatives through digitisation and digitalisation, using technologies like mobile apps to streamline operations, improve transparency, and connect farmers directly to markets, while urging universities to research co-operative digitalisation further.

African platform co-ops that should exist

Earlier, Kauna Malgwi described how African content moderators filter graphic violence, hate speech, and other harmful content. Despite the intense emotional and physical strain involved in this work, many moderators lack access to resources that could help them cope with the trauma. Furthermore, their efforts to organise for better working conditions face strong opposition from employers and resistance from traditional labour groups, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. A co-operative for content moderators could help address the unfair wages and mental health challenges faced by workers in the digital labour market. However, such a co-operative would face three key obstacles. First, it would need to organise content moderators who often work in isolated and precarious conditions. Second, it would need to challenge competitors like Sama, touted as an “ethical alternative” – a claim that could be disputed through Fairwork Foundation rankings, revealing inconsistencies in their practices. Finally, the co-operative would need to implement or partner with secure software to ensure client data is protected and free from leaks, addressing a critical concern in the industry.

Potential new platform co-operatives that could make it in Africa include a cross-border trade co-operative for East African women traders, an Africa Fashion Cooperative, and a co-operative for content moderators. Santosh Kumar proposes an African Fashion Cooperative designed to unite designers, artisans, workers, and other stakeholders in Africa’s fashion industry. This co-operative would collectively manage production, distribution, and sales while prioritising sustainability, fair labour practices, and African cultural heritage. By leveraging e-commerce and a democratic management structure, it would overcome restrictive local laws that limit foreign participation. The co-operative would also focus on joint branding, ethical marketing, skill development, and community engagement.

Need for legal and structural innovations for transnational co-operatives

Over the past nine years, only a handful of platform co-operatives have emerged from traditional co-operatives. These ventures often arise from the broader social and solidarity economy, typically initiated by people under 30, but they face skepticism – even hostility – from powerful, well-established, and often wealthy and sometimes also politically more conservative co-operatives that seek to “dominate” innovation in the sector. Without supportive laws, incorporation has been a persistent challenge. In many cases, the law does not allow co-operatives to operate in certain sectors, or there is no parity between platform co-operatives and VC-funded tech startups, placing the former at a structural disadvantage.

Additionally, co-operatives in Africa are often burdened with a reputational problem, as they are associated with corruption and colonial histories. To overcome these steep challenges, it is crucial to look beyond traditional boundaries. Platform co-operatives and solidarity enterprises can also be brought to life through innovative legal structures, like limited co-operative associations (LCAs), member-managed limited liability companies (LLCs), or distributed co-operative organisations (DCOs).

These structures offer flexibility – allowing collective, democratic co-operatives to look, act, and feel like worker co-ops while having a legal framework that navigates around outdated laws. This creativity in structure ensures that even if co-operatives are incorporated differently, they still thrive on shared ownership, democratic decision-making, and collective power. This raises the question: Could LLCs be the future of co-operatives in East Africa?

The Digital Africa Rising conference in Mombasa showcased the potential of platform cooperatives to address digital labor inequities and foundational challenges in Kenya, highlighting the urgent need for innovative, youth-driven, and alternative solutions to Big Tech.

A practical next step would be to form an interest group for platform co-operatives and adjacent solidarity economy companies, serving as a link between Kenya and PCC Thailand to foster collaboration and knowledge exchange. The conversation will continue at next year’s PCC conference in Istanbul, where the focus will shift from filtering toxic content moderation to building eco systems that prioritize worker dignity and community ownership.