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

As more women join the gig economy, especially during the pandemic, they are finding that they have to shoulder the burden of ensuring their own safety.

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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