Short Term Contracts Online, Offline Filling Kenya’s Unemployment Gap

Kenya’s gig
economy employs 14.9 million workers accounting for 83.6% of the working
population.

The norm in
Kenya is that for decades, the economy has remained largely informal but the
gig economy is traversing and filling the gaps.

Online gig economy in Kenya

Operating across several sectors, including driver and rider services, personal and household services business services, delivery services, professional services hospitality and medical care, the online gig economy in Kenya is coming as an answer to the ballooning unemployment statistics.

According to
a report by Mercy Corps, the online gig economy has gradually grown in Kenya over
the last decade. With this growth there has been a transformation on how
Kenyans access work. This sector is gradually transitioning young Kenyans
towards more accessible, competitive and consistent job opportunities.

With the
overall unemployment rates standing at 26.4%, and the Kenyan economy’s
inability to provide employment opportunities, the gig economy is increasingly
providing alternative economic opportunities.

Gig work is gradually changing the nature of how Kenya’s workforce accesses jobs. It is gradually shifting the access of work opportunities from informal to digital platforms. Hence, it is offering new revenue streams, creating more stability and formalising work conditions.

Kenya’s burgeoning youth population

The report, Towards A Digital Workforce: Understanding
The Building Blocks Of Kenya’s Gig Economy, says that Kenya’s high
unemployment rate presents a particularly difficult labour market experience
for job seekers.

“The
challenge is more pronounced in the youth bracket with 15-34 year-olds accounting
for 84% of the unemployed in Kenya. Additionally, the country is experiencing a
‘youth bulge’ with approximately 20% of the country’s population made up of
youth between the ages of 15 and 24-years old.”

This ratio of
youth is above the world’s average and Africa’s average of 15.8% and 19.2%,
respectively.

“Despite the
rapid expansion of the gig economy globally, there has been limited research to
date on the size and impact of the gig economy in low- and middle-income
countries,” the report adds.

It notes that
this lack of knowledge limits the investment in the development and growth of
the gig economy and the ability of policymakers to understand the experiences
of workers and employers.

Thus, it is “proving a challenge for the development of evidence-based policy responses”.

Independent workers

The gig
economy refers to a labour market that is characterized by the worker being
independent where their work is short-term in nature. This way, the gig worker
performs work on a short-term or task-by-task basis.

In addition, the
worker is paid by the task as opposed to those workers who receive a salary or
hourly wage.

The report categorises
seasonal and casual workers as offline gig workers while all gig work that uses
digital technology is considered online gig work.

Online gig
work falls into three categories with tech-intensive work requiring high
digital skills and is created through the production and use of technology e.g.
web designers.

There is also
tech-dependent work which requires intermediate digital skills and uses digital
technology to varying degrees like transcribers and tech-enabled work which
requires basic digital skills and mostly uses technology as a tool to connect
demand and supply e.g. taxi hailing drivers.

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