There are about 17.5 million online gig workers in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, according to the World Bank’s estimate.
The global bank disclosed this in a new study titled ‘Working Without Borders: The Promise and Peril of Online Gig Work’.
It stated that Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa accounted for 80.6 per cent of Internet traffic flow to online gig platforms from Sub-Saharan African countries.
Using its global survey-based estimation, it noted that the number of online gig workers in the three countries was about 17.5 million (the share of online gig workers from the survey multiplied by their internet-using population).
It added that there were about 21.7 million gig workers in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Commenting on the global population of gig workers, the bank revealed, “Our first approach used data science methods and estimated that there are a total 154 million unique registered and 60 million active gig workers. Our second estimation model used a global survey and estimated that there are 435 million gig workers.”
According to the World Ban, the specific type of gig work discussed in the study was the one mediated through internet platforms in which the worker was not an employee of the enterprise that operates the platform.
It said, “The platform acts as an intermediary between the gig worker and the person or business that needs the work done. The paid tasks (or gigs) could be food delivery, ride-hailing, care work, photo tagging, data entry, translation, design, software development, and so forth. The supply (gig worker) and the demand (business or person who wants the job done) are matched through either an app or a website.”
It further noted that its study was mainly focused on online gig work under a freelance category with jobs, such as design, multimedia, and creative work; business and professional management; business and professional support; sales and marketing support; data entry, administrative, and clerical; IT, software development, and tech; writing and translation; and an online microtasks category (image tagging, surveys).
The Washington-based bank estimated in its study that there were about 545 online gig work platforms globally, with headquarters in 63 countries and platform workers and clients located in 186 countries.
Over 60 per cent of those platforms are headquartered in EU countries or in the United States with only around 23 per cent headquartered in low- and middle-income countries.
It stated that, however, visitors from India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Ukraine were responsible for 18 per cent of traffic to gig platforms.
