African feminist common position on decent and dignified work in the platform economy
As African feminists, workers, and activists in social justice movements, we are organising at a historic juncture where the digital economy is rapidly reshaping our societies, economies, and everyday lives. This transformation, however, has unfolded along paths that reproduce and exacerbate colonial patterns of extraction, exploitation, and inequality.
Across our continent, digital labour platforms are expanding into vital economic sectors, including transportation, domestic and care work, and content moderation. Yet these new forms of labour are marked by old injustices—precarity, disposability, and violence— particularly for women, gender expansive persons, migrants, people living with disabilities, and those already marginalised by intersecting systems of oppression.
We reject the narrative that the digital economy is inherently inclusive or empowering. In reality, it has entrenched corporate dominance over data, technology, and livelihoods while eroding rights, protections, and democratic spaces. Under the guise of flexibility and innovation, the neoliberal capitalist platform model continues to commodify our labour, bodies, and communities, trapping us in algorithmic systems that surveil, exploit, exclude, and concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few.