Manifesting a Fair Future of Work at Fair Digital Kazi Tech Worker’s Salon
Authors: Irene Mwendwa (Pollicy) and Maureen Kasuku (Pollicy)
2025 has seen a surge in the growth of Artificial Intelligence companies worldwide. These companies are driving global advancements in tech. Yet, none are based in Africa. However, they continue to shape workforce structures and legal compliance across jurisdictions through the power they wield over access and control.
Strategically, Kenya, often dubbed the “Silicon Savannah” has been advancing a digital transformation agenda to position the country as Africa’s innovation hub. This has created opportunities for Kenya’s young workforce to gain new skills, qualifications, and global exposure.
However, this growth has come at a cost, often marked by under-planning and overly optimistic assumptions about the viability of such models for African contexts by many governments. This phenomenon, referred to as the Silicon Savannah Effect by Chinmayi Arun explores how major AI companies rely on global value chains and markets, often driven by capitalist motives to exploit and experiment on vulnerable populations in permissive regulatory environments. Industry-influenced transnational legal orders — including domestic regulation and treaties further shield these companies’ practices and products from regulation. Silicon Valley Effect by Chinmayi Arun (61 Stan. J. Int’l L. 55, 2025).
Over Labour Day weekend 2025, Pollicy convened a diverse assembly of cultural workers, artists, newsmakers, platform workers, and digital rights activists at the Fair Digital Kazi Tech Workers’ Salon. The gathering was inspired by the Fair Digital Kazi Manifesto, which responds to systemic challenges in Africa’s digital work environment, framing policy, practice, and public discourse and calls on us to reimagine the future of work through advancing equitable and dignified labour in the platform economy.
The gathering marked a critical moment for reimagining the digital future of work in East Africa and beyond.
In a continent where digital technologies are rapidly reshaping how people earn a living from ride-hailing, data labelling, content creation, to content moderation the salon asked a simple but urgent question: Can digital work be fair, dignified, and sustainable? The answer was a hopeful but defiant yes, grounded in calls for structural change.
“Culture and heritage must be at the centre of shaping Africa’s path toward a fair and inclusive future of work,” said Pollicy’s Executive Director Irene Mwendwa. Artists and cultural workers spoke of platforms that exploit creative labour while profiting from African stories. “Our work feeds global algorithms,” Nginda Ng’ang’a, a remote work advocate said, “yet our names are missing from the credits.” Platform workers shared stories of algorithmic management being fired by an app, punished for speaking out, or paid less than the cost of a daily meal.
“What is the human cost of the work we do”? Kauna Malgwi, who initiated a legal suit against Meta, asked. She voiced concerns about harassment, unsafe working conditions, and systemic exclusion from tech policy conversations “We are often invisible in data and in law — but never in reality.” Joan Kinyua, the president of the Data Labelers Association stated.
The gathering was a declaration of possibility. Tech workers from all persuasions imagined a digital economy where labour protections extend beyond physical borders, where creative work is paid fairly, and where African tech workers are not only seen, but protected and respected. They envisioned platform cooperatives, stronger labour regulation, transparent algorithms, and regional solidarity movements to challenge the power imbalance between global platforms and African workers.
The Fair Digital Kazi Tech Worker’s Salon was a preamble to our fair kazi session earlier this year during the East African Data Governance Conference in Nairobi. Together, the salon and manifesto frame a growing demand: that technology and work related to it must serve people, not exploit them.
As AI and digital systems increasingly influence Africa’s labour landscape, these conversations must move from the margins to the centre of policy, education, and economic planning. The message from the salon was clear: digital work is real work. And it’s time it’s treated as such.
