Staying safe is a full-time job for women in Africa’s gig economy

This story is part of a series with Quartz Africa and Caribou Digital that focuses on women in the gig economy in Africa.

Now more than ever, women in Africa are using online platforms as a critical source of income.  Africa’s e-commerce giant Jumia recently announced that 51% of the vendors on its platform are women and represented 33% of the total value of merchandise sold between 2019 and 2020. Africa’s ecommerce sector was valued (pdf) at $20 billion in 2020 and is estimated to grow up to $84 billion by 2030.

A study in Nigeria, Kenya, and Cote d’Ivoire found that there are more women-owned businesses on social media (61%) than men’s (51%) and this is attributed to low entry barriers. Women have also joined ride-hailing platforms as drivers, breaking structural barriers in a sector dominated by men. And many young women on the continent are providing professional services on freelancing platforms and on-demand labor platforms. Globally, four out of ten workers on online and web-based platforms worldwide are women according to the ILO.

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