Motorcycle-taxis are one of the fastest and most convenient ways to get around Uganda’s congested capital, Kampala. But they are also the most dangerous. Though they account for one-third of public transport trips taking place within the city, police reports suggest motorcycles were involved in 80% of all road-crash deaths registered in Kampala in 2023.
Promising to solve the safety problem while also improving the livelihoods of moto-taxi workers, digital ride-hail platforms emerged a decade ago on the city’s streets. It is no coincidence that Uganda’s ride-hailing pioneer and long-time market leader goes by the name of SafeBoda.
Conceived in 2014 as a “market-based approach to road safety”, the idea is to give riders a financial incentive to drive safely by making digital moto-taxi work pay better. SafeBoda claimed at the time that motorcyclists who signed up with it would increase their incomes by up to 50% relative to the traditional mode of operation, in which riders park at strategic locations called “stages” and wait for passengers.
In the years since, the efforts of SafeBoda and its ride-hail competitors to bring safety to the sector have largely been deemed a success. One study carried out in 2017 found that digital riders were more likely to wear a helmet and less likely to drive towards oncoming traffic. Early press coverage was particularly glowing, while recent academic studies continue to cite the Kampala case as evidence that ride-hailing platforms may hold the key to making African moto-taxi sectors a safer place to work and travel.
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Is it all as clear-cut as this? In a new paper based on PhD research, I suggest not. Because at its core the ride-hail model – in which riders are classified as independent contractors who do poorly paid “gig work” rather than as wage-earning employees – undermines its own safety ambitions.
Speed traps
In my study of Kampala’s vast moto-taxi industry – estimated to employ hundreds of thousands of people – I draw on 112 in-depth interviews and a survey of 370 moto-taxi riders to examine how livelihoods and working conditions have been affected by the arrival of the platforms.
To date, there has been only limited critical engagement with how this change has played out over the past decade. I wanted to get beneath the big corporate claims and alluring platform promises to understand how riders themselves had experienced the digital “transformation” of their industry, several years after it first began.
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One of the things I found was that, from a safety perspective, the ride-hail model represents a paradox. We can think of it as a kind of “speed trap”.
On one hand, ride-hail platforms try to moderate moto-taxi speeds and behaviours through managerial techniques. They make helmet use compulsory. They put riders through road safety training before letting them out onto the streets. And they enforce a professional “code of conduct” for riders.
In some cases, companies also deploy “field agents” to major road intersections around the city. Their task is to monitor the behaviour of riders in company uniform and, should they be spotted breaking the rules, discipline them.
On the other hand, however, the underlying economic structure of digital ride-hailing pulls transport workers in the opposite direction by systematically depressing trip fares and rewarding speed.
Under the “gig economy” model used by Uganda’s ride-hail platforms, the livelihood promise hangs not in the offer of a guaranteed wage but in the possibility of higher earnings. Crucially, it is a promise that only materialises if riders are able to reach and maintain a faster, harder work-rate throughout the day – completing enough jobs that pay “little money”, as one rider put it, to make the gig-work deal come good. Or, as summed up by another interviewee:
We are like stakeholders, I can say that. No basic salary, just commission. So it depends on your speed.
We already know from existing research that the gig economy places new pressures on transport workers to drive fast and take risky decisions. This is especially the case for workers on low, unsteady pay and without formal safety nets.
And yet, it is precisely these factors that routinely lead to road traffic accidents. Extensive research from across east Africa has shown that motorcycle crashes are strongly associated with financial pressure and the practices that lead directly from this, such as speeding, working long hours and performing high-risk manoeuvres. All are driven by the need to break even each day in a hyper-competitive informal labour market, with riders compelled to go fast by the raw economics of their work.
Deepening the pressure
Ride-hail platforms may not be the reason these circumstances exist in the first place. But the point is that they do not mark a departure from them.
If anything, my research suggests they may be making things worse. According to the survey data, riders working through the apps make on average 12% higher gross earnings each week relative to their analogue counterparts. This is because the online world gets them more jobs.
But to stay connected to that world they must shoulder higher operating costs, for: mobile data (to remain logged on); fuel (to perform more trips); the use of helmets and uniforms (which remain company property); and commissions extracted by the platform companies (as much as 15%-20% per trip).
As soon as these extras are factored in, the difference completely disappears. The digital rider works faster and harder – but for no extra reward.
Rethinking approaches to safety reform
Ride-hail platforms were welcomed onto the streets of Kampala as an exciting new solution to unsafe transport, boldly driven by technological innovation and “market-based” thinking.
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But it is important to remember that these are private enterprises with a clear bottom line: to one day turn a profit. As recent reports and my own thesis show, efforts to reach that point often alienate and ultimately repel the workers on whom these platforms depend – and whose livelihoods and safety standards they claim to be transforming.
A recent investment evaluation by one of SafeBoda’s first funders perhaps puts it best: it is time to reframe ride-hailing as a “risky vehicle” for safety reform in African cities, rather than a clear road to success.
Rich received funding for this research from the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
